Pysanky always look nice when on a bed of grass–preferably real, not the plastic kind we fill our baskets with these days. These photos were taken at Easter, with a film camera, of some of my pysanky, and of an arrangement in a basket with a paska and rushnyk.

My Easter basket has become quite minimalist in recent years–rather than filling it with all sorts of non-lenten foods (sausage, eggs, cheese, sweets), mine contains simply a paska (from my mother), my pysanky, and a butter lamb.  The lamb probably qualifies for antique status, as it long ago became petrified and inedible. But, year in and year out, I place it in the basket for blessing, and then back into the refrigerator until the next Easter rolls around.  It must be the holiest bit of butter on earth by now.

The pysanky are of various vintages–this is not an “annual” collection as such, but a display of whatever I had laying around the house.  There are traditional pysanky, modern pysanky, and even a copy of a contemporary Ukrainian pattern (blue with stylized trees). Noteworthy are the traditional waved pattern eggs with a very bright, contemporary feel–it was about this time that I began to develop a keen interest in traditional pysankarstvo.