Kulzhynskyi’s epic tome was published in 1899, an encyclopedic description of Kateryna Skarzhynska’s collection of pysanky. 

Skarzhynska collected pysanky from all of Russian-occupied Ukraine and more distant reaches of the Russian empire; her collection (the remains of which are housed in the Poltava Regional Museum) had 2123 pysanky from 18 different hubernias (governorates, Russian administrative districts), including Podillia.

The plates depict 2113 pysanky, 521 with full color watercolors, and all of them with tiny black and white drawings. Each pysanky is described in the text, with name (if known), provenance, place of origin, and a description of the colors. 

This is a seminal text in the history of pysankarstvo; if you cannot find a print copy (it has been reprinted recently), you can download a pdf here.

Sоme of these pysanky still exist, and are in the collection of the regional museum of Poltava (Museum of Local Lore).  The watercolors that were the basis of this book (and a planned second edition which was never printed) were spirited out of the Soviet Union during WWII, and given over to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of North America.  They currently reside in the archives of the Ukrainian Historical and Education Center of New Jersey (Bound Brook).  Plans are underway to recreate all the pysanky depicted on the cards and to display both in the future museum building (now under construction).

On the following pages, I’ve uploaded scans I have made of the plates from Kulzhynsky of Podillia pysanky.  I will add the descriptive text.

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