Featured Pysanky - Easter eggs - REAL eggs

While unpacking some stored "stuff" this afternoon, I came across a small cloisonne jar (see my new post about it in Metalware...)

Packed safely INSIDE that jar was a real egg I have had since the 1960's.

We had a thread about Pysanky in April 2017, and I mentioned it there:
https://www.antiquers.com/threads/ukrainian-pysanky.17397/

This was my post:

I LOVE those eggs! I have only ONE, but I've had it since 1968! (I'd post a photo, but it's packed away with lots of other "precious" things in the attic...)

What I remember most about it is that you can hear the "mummified" (wrong word?) egg yolk rolling around inside! It wasn't always like that, but it happened over the course of the years.

Natasha, perhaps you know this: How do they keep the egg from rotting inside and exploding, over time? (I once tried to keep a little bird egg I'd found on the ground, and it did indeed explode eventually, causing a terrible mess - and stench!)


Unfortunately, I didn't have the egg easily accessible to show at that time. I was actually saddened when told that what I'd mentioned about the yolk still being inside the egg pretty much wasn't "the way it's done."

Well, I now have the egg right here(!) and I can verify that 1) there is a hard ball rolling around inside it, and 2) there is no hole on either end, and no wax to cover such a hole.

Any thoughts?

 

Others I have seen & one my family had for many years had the contents blown out. In yours the contents have desicated. Eggshell is porous. No risk of explosions now.

 

Yep, I agree! Still, how come it didn't explode way back when - i.e. before the yolk solidified? (You used to be able to hear the contents swooshing around inside!)

That little (maybe 3/4") bird's egg I mentioned in 2017 actually exploded inside a curio cabinet, and what a mess! The smell, too, was overwhelming.

 

Decay & the resultant gas that blows the eggshell apart only take place if some little organism that breaks down the material gets inside. Your egg stayed sufficiently sterile inside not to explode.

 

I have an egg also with the contents rattling around inside. It came from an aunt who called it her million year old egg. No decoration on that one and probably just luck that it dried. As Bronwen stated: eggshell is porous, so maybe packing it in desiccant would make the difference.

That's beautifully decorated. I don't know if Pysanky eggs were originally intended to be eaten at Easter, in which case yours would be an unusual survivor. Having the contents blown is the easiest way to deal with preservation, but maybe there was some traditional drying technique.

 

Yay! - and THANK YOU, MOS! I was beginning to think I was crazy in believing that this egg still had its yolk inside!

I was thinking about the porosity of the shell, but then I wondered if the "paint" (dye?) used might have "sealed" the shell somehow?

None of this is of vital importance, of course, but it is a curiosity!

 

It's beautiful!
I'm of Polish descent and we used to make those when we were kids, though ours didn't look nearly as nice.
And we DID blow them out when the decorating was done.

 

OMG! Inside a curio cabinet?!! That made me LOL! Still laughing, glad it wasn't in mine. I can't even comprehend the smell.

 

Pam, it was HORRENDOUS! It took AGES for that smell to go away. On top of that, that one tiny little egg made the most incredible mess inside the glass of the curio cabinet. The "splattter" looked as if it had come from a dozen eggs - it was stuck all over inside the cabinet - AND on everything else in there!

As an aside: I once had an employee who tried to cook a whole raw egg (in the shell) in the office microwave... It exploded - and blew the door off the microwave and sprayed egg all over the walls & ceiling of the whole room. Even THAT could not compare to the mess made by that one tiny bird's egg! (And it didn't SMELL anywhere near as bad, either!)

 

Now my eyes are watering, I'm laughing so hard. Not at you, with you. I hope it's funny for you now that some time has passed. It's a great story.