Oksana Bilous - Kyiv, Ukraine

Ukrainian EggCessories is supporting Oksana Bilous from Kyiv, Ukraine by helping her sell some of her linens and pysanky. Due to Russia's war on Ukraine, purchasing items from Ukraine will help keep those businesses in Ukraine in business until the war is over.

Thank-you for considering purchasing items in this collection. As long as you keep purchasing, I'll keep working with Oksana to bring her items across the Atlantic Ocean to us here in North America. Everything in Oksana's collection will make meaningful holiday gifts.

OKSANA BILOUS BIO:

Oksana Bilous practices not only traditional pysankarstvo, but also uses the techniques of etching, cutting, and her own combined techniques on chicken, goose, duck, ostrich and other bird eggs.  

She was born in 1965 in Kyiv in a family of doctors. After graduating from high school, she entered the Gorky Kyiv Pedagogical Institute (now the Mykhailo Drahomanov National Pedagogical University), where she received an education degree in the specialty of secondary school geography and biology.  

Oksana learned to write pysanky from Natalia Selivachova. In 1992-1993, she became the first head of the pysanka circle at the Central Palace for Children and Youth in Kyiv. Together with Zoya Stashuk, she created the first comprehensive collection of traditional folk pysanky from throughout Ukraine, which included more than 2,000 individual pysanky.  

In 2005-2008, her collection of pysanky from ten different regions of Ukraine (which were reproduced from 19th century pysanka designs) which was entitled "The Universe in the Palms of My Hands,” was exhibited in seven cities in Ukraine.  

In 1995, together with Zoya Stashuk, she wrote and published a manual for teaching the writing of pysanky entitled “The School of Pysankarstvo.” In 2012 she published an instructional book on practical pysankarstvo techniques entitled "The Art of Pysankarstvo" and an album about pysanka symbolism entitled "The Symbolic Language of Pysanky from the Stone Age to the Present.” 

In 1994, Oksana Bilous was accepted into the National Union of Masters of Folk Art of Ukraine, and in 1997, she was awarded the title "Honored Master of Folk Art of Ukraine.” 

Oksana Bilous regularly participates in Easter fairs in the cities of Nuremberg, Frankfurt am Main, Gifhorn (Germany), Tours (France), Lublin (Poland) and the international arts festival "Slavic Bazaar" in Vitebsk (Belarus), as well as folk art festivals in Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Poland. From 2008-2015, she participated in numerous holidays, festivals, and fairs as a master of pysankarstvo in Ukraine and abroad. In 2016, she held a series of master classes in Yokohama (Japan). In 2022, she participated in the international arts festival on the Caribbean island of Martinique (France).

A large collection of Bilous’s pysanky is on permanent display in the Museum of the Pysanka in the city of Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast.   

Oksana Bilous is the founder and head of the creative center “The Workshop of Oksana Bilous", where various master classes are held for children and adults, and decorative and applied art items are produced, including pysanky, woodblock printed fabrics and clothing, and prianyky (Ukrainian gingerbread cookies).