“My aunt, the late Caroline Gudyka, made the eggs and I learned from her. We lived on a farm and my mother raised chickens and had lots of eggs for us to decorate, but mother was busy with her family. There were seven of us children, and she never decorated the eggs. After they were decorated she would dye them for me. The Polish custom is to use bees’ wax. I learned to decorate eggs as a teen-ager and have decorated some every year for 50 years. The most I ever made in one year was 28 dozen. 

         “The steps in decorating the eggs for Easter begin with hard boiling them. Then the design is put on the still warm eggs. The wax must be very hot to spread right and make ‘the daisies’ my favorite design. I use a piece of twig with a straight pin stuck in the end as a stylus to make the design. I try to do no more than three dozen a a sitting. The time it takes to decorate the eggs depends on whether I have company to talk to, how intricate the design is and how tired I am.

         “After the wax design is put on they eggs are dyed using cold dye. I like the colors in Pass dye, for all you do is add vinegar and cold water. Do not use hot water dye because it will melt the wax design.  You can make your own designs. The design symbols have various meanings in Polish tradition.  A flower means love and the pine tree stands for health. The reindeer is for wealth and a spiral stands for growing. Hens and roosters are for wishes coming true.

         “There are three ways of decorating them, the Pisanki method which means the eggs are decorated by writing on them. Then they can be divided into two different techniques, ‘batikowane” and ‘scrobane. With batikowane you use a stylus and wax to draw on the egg, then they are colored in dyes.  Skrobane uses an egg which is first dyed a solid color then the ornamentation is scraped or scratched into the shell.  There are three main motifs of design, geometric, floral or human and animal designs.

         “In the early days, people used plant materials to make their dyes but now commercial dyes can be bought.  Yellow comes from onion skins, straw and saffron. Orange comes from crocus petals, red from beets and plums.  Green comes from grass, moss and spinach, blue comes from sunflower seeds and logwood. Blackberries provide purple dye, while alder cones and coffee make brown. Black comes from walnut shells and elder bark.”

         There are some legends, one relates that a basket of decorated eggs was taken to Pontius Pilate by Mary, who pleaded for her son, Jesus’ life. When she was refused her tears made dots on the eggs. Dots are still used today in many pisanki designs to show reverence to the Blessed Mother. Among the Easter customs in Poland is taking baskets of eggs and food for the Easter table, on Holy Saturday to be blessed by the priest. This custom was done in Pe Ell at St. Joseph’s church in the 1930s. 

from Pe Ell's Polish Heritage, Leo Kowalski 2008