The pysanky below are taken from Odarka Onyshchuk’s “Symbolism of the Ukrainian Pysanka,” and are all of the drop-pull variety, although the linear batik method of wax application is frequently found in this region as well. The designs are straightforward, with almost all being two color eggs, although multi-colored drop-pull is more common here (at least in the post WWII era) than in other Lemko areas. I wrote several of these examples on brown chicken eggs, although they should properly have been white, as brown eggs were not commonly used in the writing of pysanky.
Onyshchuk has two sections of Lemko pysanky in her book––these are from Priashiv, in what is now eastern Slovakia. The names given to the pysanky are probably descriptors applied by Onyshchuk rather than folk names. The quality of the photos in the book is sometimes poor, and the white areas can appear lightly colored (as in several of the eggs above).
Note pysanka number 5: it depicts a sheaf of wheat. Although wheat is a popular motif on modern diasporan pysanky, this is the only example I’ve found on traditional eggs Diasporan eggs usually show stalks of wheat, with botanically correct depictions of the head/spike.
(The numbers associated with the pysanky are just the order in which the eggs were placed on the unnumbered plates of the book, with a new sequence for each region.)
