My parents bought me my first electric stylus back in the mid-70s, when I was still in high school.  They were a fairly new development in pysankarstvo, and not that easy to find.  I think I got mine from a local Ukrainian store.  It was similar to the one in the photo above.

Little did I know that they were produced locally, by a Mr. Ohar, and engineer by training who’d never written a pysanka.  He saw a need, and filled it.

His electrics became quite popular; UGS carried them in their catalog, and later on their site, and most pysanka suppliers sold them, too. 

There have been three largely available versions of the Wax Art electrics.  The first, pictured above, had a beige and white handle.  There wasn’t a lot of insulation, and the handle would heat up and make your fingers numb after a while.  The second version replaced the beige part with a much thicker greenish tube; it was better insulation, but your fingers could still get hot:

The third and current version has black foam insulation on the handle.  The insulation problem has been solved, but wax does drip into the black foam–a minor problem, and one I can live with.

Mr. Ohar’s Daughters, Uliana and Chrystyna, have taken over the business, and expanded and modernized his line of electrics.  You can buy fixed tip or interchangeable tip styluses.  You have a choice of 110V or 220V models.  And tips run from extra-fine to extra-heavy.

I don’t use either the extra-fine nor he extra-heavy trips, although I have tried them out.  The XF appears to require ultra-filtered waxes; I cannot get ordinary wax to flow through the tip, even with the charger pin in.  And the XH, which also requires a charger pin, runs out of wax quickly and I find a pain to work with; I prefer to use a red Delrin non-electric instead.

All in all, this is a workhorse electric, one I depend on a lot!

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