Easter is always a special time of year and the last decade or so, one of my favorite parts is the ancient easter art of egg decorating!
I have vague memories of coloring eggs with food dye as a child and have certainly also done this as an adult. However, over the last decade or so, I have had the privilege of learning from various Hungarian craftspeople more traditional techniques. Drawing on the egg with wax before dying to create patterns, for example.
But the problem is, you need the due, the wax, the little tool to draw with. Even with plain dying, you still need to go buy food dyes, which can get messy.
This is an ancient Easter art. Something done perhaps even before Easter existed. So what was used for coloring before chemical dyes? In the case of the eggs seen above, amazingly onion skins! Onion skins for the color and leaves to make the shapes.
This discovery was so inspiring, Art of Melush did a workshop with some Pre-K classes in the Bronx. What a wonder it was as each egg was pulled out of our “Onion skin soup” and the leaves pulled off to reveal such beautiful patterns! We did need a lot of onion skins though! We ended up going to supermarkets and grabbing the onion trash left behind in their onion displays, but it was worth it. So, start saving that onion skin trash. Next year you can use it to make something really beautiful! (as well as edible and environmental).
*Special thanks to artist Ildiko Fekete, who shared this ancient knowledge with me, so that I could share it with others.
