The ethnographic museum in Lviv is located on the Prospect of Shevchenko, in the heart of the city.  It has a huge collection of pysanky–thousands of eggs–locked away in its vaults, safe from prying eyes.  Or any eyes, for that matter.  No one is allowed to go down and see them, much less photograph or otherwise copy their designs.

The museum has had the same small collection of pysanky on display for at least twenty year, possibly longer.  Everyone who’s been through the museum has seen them, a few handfuls of pysanky from Kyiv and western Ukraine, under glass.  The pysanky NOT from Halychana (Polissia, Kyiv region and Volyn) are mixed together like this (photo below).  Are they divided up left to righ, up and down, or all mixed together?  You guess is as good as mine:

Several years ago, the museum published a big glossy book with nice photos of parts of its collections. Among the photos was the one at the top of this page, labeled only Volyn, 1894.  It is an interesting collection of pysanky. 

Volynian pysanky are not known for animal imagery, except for maybe a rare bird; but here is a whole set of farm animals. Who wrote these pysanky?  Why did they write them?  Were these designs a local tradition, or what we would now call “avtorski”? By the late 1800s were are definitely in the modern era, and these could be the individual work of a hobbyist or artisan.