"Painting eggs was love at first sight" –Ildikó Fekete decorates eggs under the spell of angles and symmetries
Ildikó Fekete was captivated by the art of wax-dyed eggs from a very young age: she has been making them since she was 16. Today, she has four thousand pieces of artwork in her home, has had several exhibitions in Hungary and abroad, and has been awarded the Junior Prima Award and the title of Young Master of Folk Art for her work. The young artist from Alcsút works full-time as a software tester, is a mathematician by training and not only dyes eggs at Easter but also devotes much of her free time to this special hobby.
Falling in love
Decorating eggs at Easter takes many shapes and forms around the world. In Hungary, one of the most common egg decorating techniques is wax dyeing, but this technique is also common in neighbouring countries. The method is the same everywhere, but the nature of the decorations varies from region to region and from one ethnic group to another. Ildikó was introduced to the wax dyeing technique by a chance encounter and fell in love with it.
"When I was quite young, my mother and I unsuspectingly walked into an Easter market where the ladies were not only selling eggs but decorating them. It was love at first sight for me! One of the ladies explained how to do it and we bought the necessary tools.
"As I was still in kindergarten, at first it was only my mother practicing the technique, and I would just stand next to her and say, 'Mom, I don't like this one because the line is crooked, please make another one,'" she says with a laugh.
For a very long time, Easter at their house looked like this: her father would go out and buy a hundred eggs and would blow them out so she and her mother could decorate them. The first time Ildikó tried it, the lines were crooked and the pattern was not symmetrical. At around the age of 16, she managed to make a beautiful egg. After that, one work of art followed another, until she found herself with hundreds of decorated eggs at home. It was then that she thought it would be good to give this activity a concept, one that went beyond painting. So she started collecting motifs from different regions and working with local motifs.
The origin of the motifs
Soon afterward, Ildikó found that many patterns have been around for decades, centuries, even millennia. She says that we do not know the names and meanings of all of the patterns and motifs but there are a few that we know more about.
We know, for example, that most of the egg decorations that are called Hungarian today come from Transylvania, from the Gyimes region. The names of the designs and the meanings attached to them were also recorded here.
One of the most common motifs from here is the rake pattern, which is found in many countries.
The applied folk artist also spoke about the origins of wax dyeing eggs: "Because dyed eggs are made for Easter, egg decorating is nowadays associated with Christianity, although it dates back to much older times. We also have decorations and symbols that predate Christianity. In the Ormánság region (South Hungary) there are many drum-rope patterns, which refer to the drums of the shamans. And in the Gyimes region (South East Transylvania) there are a lot of palm, finger, and hand representations, and often six fingers appear on eggs. This bodily defect was one of the particular characteristics of the shamans. The shamans had a healing task, so these designs are also used to ward off curses, trouble, and disease."
Finding the motifs takes a lot of work. Ildikó has tried to collect as many samples as possible in recent years, but most of the time it was chance that brought her things that she could look up later. "I started my research by going to the storerooms of various ethnographic museums and having a look at what they had. They usually keep good inventories, yet in the case of many motifs, the collection site had not been indicated. Finding where they are from is a difficult task, and it also requires good memory skills, so that two years later you can recognize that you have seen that particular motif somewhere before and match the missing pieces of the puzzle together. I'm always excited by new information, and I always have to look into it," she explains.
Link with Mathematics
Ildikó specialised in Mathematics, and that is what she graduated from at university, and decorates eggs only as a hobby.
She thinks the connection between these two areas is also interesting from a mathematical point of view, since when painting on eggs, angles are halved and mirrored, and different symmetries and polygons are created.
With a little mathematical insight, Ildikó feels she can more easily pass on the know-how of wax dyeing eggs to someone who has never done it before. She can easily explain the initial steps, how to draw the lines, how to make a symmetrical pattern, or how to make a more special division.
As to whether drawing skills are necessary to decorate eggs, the artist says: "The pattern of the eggs very often does not require you to have particularly good drawing skills. There are some regions where it doesn't hurt to be a bit more skilled, but a pattern from the Gyimes region, for example, is relatively easy to make. It is more likely to require spatial vision or primary school Maths skills to be able to draw the divisions well. Once you have that, it's very simple from there."
Success at home and abroad
Ildikó involved her parents and her partner in her unusual passion.
Her mother helps her with her egg painting while she is cooking, and her father has become her manager since they started exhibiting their work.
Her dad designed the china cabinets for displaying the eggs and installed the lighting in them. Ildikó's partner takes on the role of the painter during her travels, but there are also times when they do research together in the museum, where Ildikó selects the samples from the archives and her partner takes pictures of them.
Ildikó is usually very busy before Easter, usually going to events abroad – this year she's giving lectures in France and the United States. She considers herself very lucky in this respect because she can travel to places she might not otherwise have the opportunity to go. But for Hungarians living abroad, she does not only give workshops at Easter, they are happy to paint eggs at any time of the year.
She has also had exhibitions of her own in several parts of the country for a number of years. Fortunately, she has enough cabinets and works of art to run two exhibitions in parallel. But Ildikó's work has also been shown abroad: In New York, for example, the artist's exhibition was open to the public for eight months. What she is particularly proud of is the title of Young Master of Folk Art, but she is also very happy about the Junior Prima Award. She feels that she has received all of the awards that one is able to receive at such a young age.
Book and new goals
In 2019, her first book was published, entitled Message Written in Wax, which deals with wax dyed eggs in Hungarian and Hungarian-speaking areas. It contains the artworks and related customs of 15 regions, including some that Ildikó was the first to explore.
The book has also been published in English, so foreign customers can also learn about egg decorating in the Carpathian Basin. Experiences and feedback show that people from America, Canada, and New Zealand also like painting Hungarian eggs because for them it is a curiosity.
As for future goals, Ildikó emphasized that she would like to get to know as many regions as possible and share them with others. "In Hungary, there is very little written material on wax dyeing eggs, but I have found that this is the case in the surrounding countries too. Only the Ukrainians are exemplary in this respect, with countless books written by them on the topic. Now I have started to research and paint eggs from the V4 countries, and I would like to expand this material, as well as give further courses and lectures at home and abroad," says the young artist with sparkling eyes.
Related content
