Under construction

The tools used for making pysanky are of many sorts, and go by many names.  When I first learned to make pysanky, at the age of seven, at St. Mary’s Ukrainian school, I learned to call it a «писальце» (pysal’tse).  The English language instruction books I had referred to it as a stylus.  And those names stuck for me.

The name “pysal’tse”, like the word “pysanka,” has as its root “pys-,” which refers to writing.  Pysanky are written, not drawn or painted.  And the pysal’tse is the tool used to do the writing.

But there are other names.  Many people refer to it as a “kistka1,” largely because that is the name that the Ukrainian Gift Shop Books use.  The UGS books have helped to popularize the art outside of the Ukrainian community, and that name has caught on, particularly in North America2.

Other English-language books have referred to it as a “tjanting,” from the tool of that name used to make batik fabrics, or a pysak3.  Modern Ukrainian books on the subject uniformly refer to it as a «писачок»

(pysachok). Oksana Bilous, in her book “The School of Pysankarstvo,” gives a list of variant names for the pysachok:

                        писак  (pi-SOCK)

                        кістка  (KEEST-kah)

                        кулька  (KOOL’-kah)

                        дідик  (DYEE-dick)

                        мигулка  (mi-HOOL-kah)    

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1. 1.“Kistka,” pronounced “keest-ka,” is also the Ukrainian word for a bone.  In Ukrainian books I have also seen the variant “kystka,” pronounced “kisst-ka,” with a short “i.”
   Marie Procai, the founder of the Ukrainian Gift Shop, comes from the Sokal region of western Ukraine.  This may have been a local usage that she has internationalized.
   

2. 2.Most websites and English-language books use this name.  I don’t, probably out of sheer stubbornness and force of habit.  If writing in English, I use “stylus.”  If writing in Ukrainian, I now tend to use “pysachok.”
   

3. 3.Cecelia Ference, in “Making Ukrainian Pysanky,” mentions this variant.