Besides the usual egg painting using egg paint or natural dye, or the one involving different geometrical and floral motifs, several other unique, original techniques have been developed by the Romanian craftsmen during the years.
The beaded Easter eggs
One of the them is adorning the eggs with beads, commonly found in Bukovina and northern Transylvania. This technique has been preserved by women in a village in Bistrita-Nasaud for centuries. For every egg sewn with beads, a housewife from Salva village on Salautei Valley is working for more than an hour.
The bead sewing in Salva village has passed from one generation to another and has actually become a lifestyle in this area, as it is no confined just to Easter eggs, but it’s widespread to folk costumes, belts, paintings or jewelry as well.
In other areas, such as in Vicov, Suceava, Bukovina region, villagers make the eggs of softwood, polish them with wax and then apply the colorful beads.
You can read more about the beaded Easter eggs here.
The shod eggs
A creative villager from Bacau has discovered another original Easter egg painting technique, which is even registered as trademark: shod eggs, meaning they have a horseshoe as support.
Constantin Gavriliu is storing goose eggs over the winter and is designing a horseshoe for each of them. The man is drilling the eggs in two spots and is cleaning them and after that the horseshoes are applied. The craftsman is selling these eggs abroad, too, for prices ranging from EUR 10 to EUR 50 a piece.
Leaf painted eggs
In other regions, such as in Maramures, children would pick up leaves of various shapes from the garden, while their mothers and grandmothers are using them to decorate the Easter eggs. Eggs are put in a pantyhose together with the leaf and after that they are dipped in the paint or in the water where red onion had been previously boiled, to obtain a natural dye. Anyway, this technique has become so familiar that it is being used on Easter in most part of the country, both in rural or urban areas.