Eva Sitarz, a Polish-Ukrainian bead artist based in Lublin, has garnered international attention for her extraordinary reinterpretation of the traditional pysanka—the Ukrainian decorated egg—through the meticulous medium of beadwork. Her beaded pysanky eggs are not mere embellishments of an already ornate folk form; they are complete reimaginings, combining centuries-old symbolism with the tactile, luminous language of glass seed beads. Each of Sitarz’s beaded eggs is a masterclass in cultural synthesis, painstaking technique, and visual storytelling, transforming a symbol of spring and resurrection into a jewel-like object that embodies memory, identity, and resilience.
Pysanky are traditionally created using a wax-resist dyeing technique, in which complex geometric and symbolic patterns are applied to eggshells using melted beeswax and successive layers of color. Each motif—stars, rosettes, spirals, stylized plants, animals, and cross-forms—holds specific meanings, often connected to fertility, protection, and renewal. Sitarz, trained in fine arts and descended from a lineage of Ukrainian craftspeople, was immersed in this tradition from an early age. Her decision to replace wax and dye with beads was not taken lightly; it emerged from years of experimentation and a desire to explore how tactile materials could give new dimension to the ephemeral and fragile nature of pysanky, preserving their spiritual and aesthetic power in a more enduring form.
The foundation of each beaded egg is a real eggshell—most often chicken, duck, or goose—that has been carefully emptied, cleaned, and reinforced with resin to withstand the weight of the beadwork. Using a fine needle and thread, Sitarz works from the apex of the egg downward in concentric rings, laying out each motif with a precision that mirrors the wax-resist method but rendered entirely in micro-beads. Japanese Delica and Czech seed beads, prized for their uniformity and brilliant finish, are her materials of choice. Her color palette echoes traditional pysanky hues—saffron yellow, deep black, pomegranate red, verdant green, and midnight blue—but is often enhanced with metallics, pearlized whites, and transparent beads to manipulate light and add dimensionality.
What distinguishes Sitarz’s work is not only the technical virtuosity—each egg can require up to 80 hours of continuous stitching—but the way she reinterprets pysanka iconography through the lens of textile logic. In place of flat dye fields, her designs rely on dense geometric tessellation. Stars are built from nested diamond shapes, their arms stitched with graduated shades of gold and orange to simulate solar radiance. Vines and leaves appear as interwoven helixes, with tiny glass droplets suggesting dew or sacred tears. Even the humble dot, so ubiquitous in pysanky design, is elevated to a gleaming bead of silver or hematite, catching light in a way that feels both cosmic and minute.
In her series Rozdzielona Ziemia (Divided Earth), Sitarz uses beaded pysanky to explore themes of displacement and diaspora. One egg from this collection, rendered in a stark palette of black, red, and white, depicts a broken eight-pointed star—traditionally a symbol of wholeness and direction—fractured across the egg’s curvature and stitched with interlocking lines that never quite meet. The egg is capped with a halo of red beads at its apex and base, suggesting wounds or seals. Embedded within the pattern are tiny, almost imperceptible crosses and bird forms, referencing the Ukrainian tradition of embedding prayers within visual motifs. When scanned with a magnifying lens, some of the eggs reveal coded dates and Cyrillic initials worked into the beaded matrix, acting as personal memorials to loved ones lost to war or exile.
Sitarz’s beadwork is not solely confined to static objects. In some cases, she mounts her eggs into kinetic installations—suspended from monofilament or nested in hand-forged iron cradles—inviting viewers to move around them and witness the shimmer of light across thousands of bead surfaces. In one exhibition held in Warsaw titled Nasze Jajko, she presented a roomful of her beaded pysanky displayed under rotating fiber-optic lights that altered their appearance depending on angle and intensity. The motion suggested the turning of the earth, the cyclical nature of ritual, and the shifting identities of diasporic heritage.
Each egg functions as a narrative microcosm. In Matka Ziemia (Mother Earth), a large ostrich egg fully encrusted in beads, Sitarz constructs a visual mandala of fertility symbols—snakes, wheat sheaves, and concentric circles—that radiate outward from the center. The beadwork uses graduated greens, from jade to moss to lime, interspersed with glass pearls to signify seeds. The piece references not only agrarian life but also the spiritual role of women in transmitting cultural knowledge. It is simultaneously an object of devotion, a sculptural map, and a wearable archive.
While Sitarz’s eggs are occasionally sold as collector’s items, she insists that their primary value is not commercial. For her, each beaded pysanka is a devotional act, a way of enshrining language, history, and care in a form that can be held in the palm of a hand. She often speaks of the bead as a unit of time—each one representing a breath, a prayer, a thought for the ancestors. Her work has been included in ethnographic museums and contemporary art spaces across Europe, where it challenges viewers to consider beadwork not as mere ornamentation but as a medium of spiritual architecture.
Eva Sitarz’s beaded pysanky are far more than decorative eggs. They are radiant orbs of encoded meaning, where thread and glass become vehicles for continuity and reinvention. Her work stands as a brilliant testament to how ancestral tradition can be reinterpreted through contemporary craft, preserving its soul while expanding its form. In every stitch, in every gleaming bead, she creates a bridge between past and future, fragility and endurance, the sacred and the personal. Through her hands, the pysanka becomes a prism of light and memory, spinning ancient stories anew in the language of shimmering glass.