Beaded “Pysanky”

Woven Beadwork

 
 

The two eggs in the foreground of the photo above are made by a different method than those on other pages of this website.  They are made in the manner of gerdany, those intricately woven bead necklaces common in Ukraine.

Using only a needle, beads, thread and her skill, the craftswoman fashions a brightly patterned design from beads.  It is slipped over an egg, wooden or real, and then the latticework tightened and tied.  The result is a technicolor beaded coat for a plain, ordinary egg.






Above: Details from traditional gerdany

(L’viv Ethnographic Museum collection)




Above: Detail from woven beadwork egg

(brown eggshell under beadwork)


Below are a few examples of this style of beaded egg.  If you look closely, you can see the brown chicken egg under the beads in several of them – and the irregular shape of one due to the egg being slightly crushed in transit (that’s how I realized that these were real eggs and not wooden or plastic molds).

 

Gerdany in the round

  Traditional     Modern




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