As a girl, she already had a suitable environment for creativity at home – her father painted pictures, her sister studied art education, and another sister was a seamstress. And so she constantly drew and also enjoyed knitting and sewing on a sewing machine. Following her sister’s example, she also decided to study the pedagogical direction of art education.

She got to know the tradition of decorating the Easter eggs from Domaniža and their batik with wax three times. It all began in 1982 with the Easter eggs of Štefánia Dudáková from this village, which she gave to her husband Sona Belokostolská, when he photographed them for a poster. Every year their house was adorned with these Easter eggs during Easter and she became interested in learning more about them. The opportunity arose in the spring of 1993, when she attended a three-hour course by Mrs. Dudák in Domaniža. Here she learned the technique and basic tools used in this method of decoration, which she was able to further develop the following summer at a two-week course with this great master. Here she learned that each pattern on a Domaniža Easter egg, which by the way is not painted but written (according to a scribe tool in the shape of a capillary), has its own name, and there are approximately a hundred different ones. She also learned the principle of using the four basic colors (yellow, red, orange, blue) used in this village for decorating eggs.

“My first lines in the spring were shaky, incomplete, I held the scribe in my hand for the first time in my life, I didn’t know how to handle it correctly. But even then I received praise from Mrs. Dudák, I think for laying out the pattern. During the summer, my spiky lines slowly straightened out, I changed the way I held the tool. I constantly listened and noted everything the master said about colors and their combinations, about mistakes that could arise from improper arrangement, about inserting cold colors among warm ones,” she reminisces about her beginnings under the guidance of master Soňa Belokostolská.

Today, she is a master herself and keeps alive the old, unique technique of multicolored batik decoration of wax-resist Easter eggs, typical only for some regions of Slovakia. In addition to her own creations, she also taught this technique to children at the gymnasium and in the elementary art school as part of art education classes. There is no student of hers who wouldn’t recognize the technique of decorating Domaniža Easter eggs in the pre-Easter environment.

She enjoys situations where she makes a mistake during decoration and in her effort to salvage the egg, an alternative to the traditional pattern emerges, which ultimately becomes a success. The secret and excitement of what the Easter egg will be like in the end make it all worth it. That’s why she usually works without pre-sketching or thinking of a motif, letting spontaneity guide her. An advantage is that many Domaniža patterns start off the same, so suddenly the design reveals itself during the process. However, she always makes sure that it doesn’t lose its original Domaniža character. In this regard, she also considers the choice of egg type important, reaching for duck eggs at most, but mainly using hen’s eggs, as the thin line from the Domaniža scribe tool (1.5 – 2 mm) gets lost on larger eggs. A separate chapter is coloring. As an art education teacher, she can experiment with colors, which is perhaps an advantage when it comes to Domaniža Easter eggs, because the order of applying colors and knowledge of how each color behaves when combined with another is immensely important in this somewhat alchemical process.

She started cooperating with ÚĽUV in 2009 and two years later she was awarded the title of master of folk art production in the area of producing batiked Easter eggs. She is happy that the knowledge she gained from the great master, thanks to her own enthusiasm, can be passed on to young people and that they, despite the fact that making Domaniža Easter eggs is a lengthy and demanding process, show sincere interest in them.

She creates Easter eggs during the winter season from Christmas to Easter, and lately she has been focusing more on working with shuck, as the themes she captures are year-round. When working with shuck, she tries to differentiate herself from other producers, who usually depict people at work. She is more drawn to depicting families, women with children, children’s games, later she introduced nativity scenes, and since 2014, she has also been making shuck magnets. In her creations, she strives to maintain a pure and simple expression.

Source: Mikolaj, Tomáš: Masters of the New Millennium [online]. Bratislava: Center of Folk Art Production, 2020 [accessed on May 29, 2024]. Available at: https://uluv.sk/kniznica/digitalna-kniznica/