Issue date: March 31, 1999
By JANE KNOERLE
For thousands of years, the egg has been a symbol of fertility and spring's bursting forth with new life.
Through the centuries peasants of the Ukraine and other Eastern regions have decorated eggshells with melted beeswax and dye. Called pysanky, the decorated eggs are given to family members and respected outsiders at Easter. To give a pysanka (singular form) is to give a symbolic gift of life.
Traditionally made during Holy Week, pysanky are taken to the church on Easter Sunday to be blessed before they are given away. Families treasure their collections of eggs passed down through generations.
Tania Diedovitch's collection of Easter eggs dates back from when she was a child living in China with her parents. Her collection of 220 eggs at her Menlo Park home includes much more than pysanky. There are crystal eggs, malachite eggs, wooden eggs, an ostrich egg, even a treasured blue porcelain egg that once belonged to Czarina Alexandra Feodora of the Russian royal family.
Mrs. Diedovitch is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin in Menlo Park; the church considers Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Christ, the most important holiday of the year. On Russian Easter Sunday, April 11, members will greet each other with the tidings "Christ is Risen" and exchange eggs.
In the days of imperial Russia, the Romanov royal family raised the custom of exchanging eggs to luxury levels. Starting around 1870, jeweler Carl Faberge created the ultimate Easter eggs for the czar and his family. Made of gold and enamel, encrusted with jewels, the eggs became extravagant expressions of the centuries-old tradition.
Tania Diedovitch's egg collection began with a lacquered egg she received from her parents when she was 5 and living in Harbin, China, where the family were Russian emigres. She continued the collection throughout her childhood and after she married Boris Diedovitch in 1950. The couple moved to Brazil in 1953 and came to the United States in 1965.
Today Mrs. Diedovitch is the owner of Tania and B Coiffures and Gift Boutique on Oak Grove Avenue in Menlo Park. Mr. Diedovitch is retired from a job as purchasing agent for NEC Electronics Inc. of Sunnyvale.
Mrs. Diedovitch has collected eggs from all over the world, with the eggs from Russia having special meaning. There are nesting eggs, each painted with a religious icon, a china cup from St. Petersburg, shaped like an egg, and an egg painted with a scene from a Russian fairy tale. An egg-shaped icon opens to reveal a portrait of St. John the Baptist.
Many hand-painted pysanky have been given to Mrs. Diedovitch by members of her church sisterhood, of which she is a past president. A special gift from her husband was a pink silk scarf imprinted with a replica of a bejeweled Faberge egg.
The Diedovitches often entertain visiting Russian dignitaries, such as Count Michael Tolstoy, a descendant of the famed Russian author. When entertaining, the Diedovitches bring out their Russian artifacts and put on a spread of favorite Russian delicacies, including blini and caviar. Visitors have given Mrs. Diedovitch many of the eggs in her collection.
Tania Diedovitch treasures her collection of Easter eggs, but they mean more to her than beauty. When she and her husband attend services at the Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin on Russian Easter Sunday, exchange eggs and proclaim "Christ is Risen," they join parishioners in reaffirming the egg as a symbol of life, as it has been to their ancestors for thousands of years.
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