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[Morgan Halgren] If you couldn't use words to convey a message or tell a story what would you do?
Frances Clapper of Tabor knows of a rather unusual way. She decorates eggs with the symbols and colors
that her Ukrainian ancestors used to send each other messages of hope and goodwill.
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[Halgren] In southwest Iowa, Francis Clapper is known by some as the egg lady.
Not because she has two dozen or so decorated eggs that come from all corners of the world,
but because she designs and creates Ukrainian eggs herself.
[Frances Clapper] These eggs are called pasanki,
which is from the Ukrainian word which means to write, and that's exactly what you're doing.
Is you're writing on the egg with wax.
[Halgren] The tradition of Ukrainian egg painting
is one that is handed down from mother to daughter.
While Francis's father was Ukrainian, her mother was Polish.
So it wasn't something Frances learned until she met a woman in South Carolina.
For 20 years now, Francis has been dressing in traditional Ukrainian dress,
and sharing the knowledge of Ukrainian traditions with young and old alike.
[Clapper] It wasn't until I came here, that I really started working on the eggs.
The newspaper did an article about the eggs once before Easter, and then I started getting calls from people.
And I didn't realize, at that point, how many clubs and organizations there were in southwest Iowa.
I went and talked to quite a few of them.
[Halgren] To decorate an egg, Frances starts with a blown egg
with very few blemishes. She then takes a number two pencil and begins to create a design.
[Clapper] Eggs were originally made way back in the Mesopotamian area,
which is where the Slav people, Ukrainian people, came from.
And, they've been making eggs for over 2 000 years.
First there were Pagan symbols on the eggs. The star, which is what we're going to work on today,
was originally considered good luck because stars could guide you at night.
When they became Christianized, in about about the 10th century. The star came to mean Christ, for the star of Bethlehem.
So when you give someone an egg with a star on it, you're saying good luck and may God or Christ be with you.
Okay, the instrument that I'm using is a stylus; and in the Ukrainian language, it's called a kitsuka.
And it is, simply, a little funnel on the stick. You heat the funnel in the candle flame and hold it to some beeswax.
And wherever you touch the wax to the egg, it is going to remain white.
And what we're going to be doing is waxing and dying through several colors.
White is a sign of purity.
If you have a lot of white on on your egg, you might give that to a small child.
Normally, the darker eggs were given to older people.
The first dye that this is going into is yellow.
Now, the egg will have to sit in the dye for about five to ten minutes depending on how quickly the egg dyes.
Traditionally, when you're beginning on the eggs.
Normally the way to do the eggs is that you would bless yourself. You would say a small prayer before you worked on the eggs.
And, the reason why was because these represented the wishes for what you were wishing for
the people that you were giving the eggs to. Therefore in order to keep all evil away and evil thoughts,
you were supposed to only think good things as you worked on the eggs.
So that the goodness that you were thinking for that person that you're working on the egg would come through.
Now orange is for friendship and warmth of the sun.
You have to be careful when you're working with the wax. That you blend in your old waxed lines with new ones.
If you only go up to the line and don't blend it in, you'll get little cracks and crevices.
And then your last dye, which is the black, will seep in there; and you'll have little marks showing where you didn't cover well.
It's almost done. And the red one's back here.
You know, they always say, Ask and you receive.
I have a tendency to do that a lot. I may be a nagger of God, I don't know.
But, I pray about a lot of stuff, and it's nice to do it while you're working on the eggs
because you have the time to think about it. And I think about my father a lot when I'm working on the eggs. And my mother.
Because my father died when I was 19, and my mother died here about five or six years ago.
And it's sort of a way to tie in with them, and to think about times past.
Now, this egg is finished, and it's ready to go into the black dye. That will be the last dye.
This is the final stage, and all that remains is for the wax to be taken off the egg.
It's sort of fun to do talks for kids. They think it's magic to see all the colors underneath there.
I went to one fourth grade class in Sydney, Iowa.
About a week later, I got a bunch of thank you notes from the kids. And the one I remember the most was
this one little boy, who wrote simply, Dear Mrs. Clapper, Thank you for coming. Those eggs were decent.
I figured that was probably from the fourth grader, the highest praise that I could get.
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