Two years ago, when I created this page, there were very few sites about pysanky from Ukraine.  Now there is, while not quite an embarrassment of riches, a lot more material out there. The Ukrainian Wikipedia has a brief article here. 

Googling «Писанка» will give you lots of hits (106,000), some of which are related to a singer named “Ruslana Pysanka” (and may involve Rubenesque soft porn), but many others are web sites with lovely eggs. 

Some nice ones I’ve come across include these with photos/drawings/watercolors of traditional pysanky:              

and these sites dedicated to individual traditional pysanka artists:

Svitlana’s site has not only photos of some very beautiful traditional pysanky that she has made, but also several essays (in Ukrainian) about pysanky and pysankarstvo (including lesson plans for the teaching of pysankarstvo.)  Luba Romaniv makes Lemko (drop-pull) pysanky, and has some nice photos of them on her web page. 

There used to be sites with pysanky from Vinnytsya and other regions, but they have disappeared, along with a very nice Carpatho-Rusyn site.

I’ve come across a newer site that showcases pysankary of Ukraine called «Рукотвори» (Rukotvory, i.e. Handcrafts), among other folk artists.  The website is here:

Rukotvory is now available in English translation of a sort (just click on the “ENG” in the right upper corner), and you can see some of my work here.

There are also some sites with pysanky by modern Ukrainian pysanka artists:

Oleh creates beautiful pysanky with Hutsul motifs and Hutsul colors, but with a wild, imaginative flair and very fine work. Halyna creates beautiful original pysanky on ostrich eggs, as well as more traditional-looking ones on chicken and goose eggs. (The pysanky are gorgeous, but the photos are very low resolution and details are hard to make out.) Olya is a painter who also writes pysanky, original designs but in her native Volynian style.  Andriy is unique, with a style quite modern and unreproducible.  His pysanky are small works of art. Oleksandr creates unremarkable (but nice) traditional-styled pysanky, along with beautiful florals.

The ArtUkraine site is a wonderful source for articles about pysanky (and other aspects of Ukrainian culture).  It also has a wonderful gallery of vintage pysanka postcards.

And a Lemko archival site has uploaded two books about Lemko pysanky, in pdf form, which you can download here:

The oddest Ukrainian site is this one, which is about plans to create a new architectural symbol of Ukraine, and the world’s biggest pysanka.  It’s a bit opaque; this article explains it a bit better and has more pictures (Ukrainian language only).

Proposed new symbol of Ukraine and world’s largest pysanka

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