ASHFIELD — Visitors to Belding Memorial Library last weekend gained insight on the colorful process that is pysanky, the Ukrainian tradition of decorating Easter eggs.

After grabbing an egg, attendees, guided by longtime Ashfield residents Mary Link and Alex Osterman, hovered their styluses — or “kistkas,” as Ukrainians call the pysanky tool tipped with a pocket for beeswax — over a candle flame. The drop of beeswax then melted into a smooth medium for decorating.

Next, the step that gives pysanky its name: write, or “pysaty,” in Ukrainian. While some attendees drew Christian symbols from Link’s handout, like ribbons, triangles, roses, fish and eight-pointed stars, others followed their creative instincts, doodling their own designs.

“It’s a great joy,” she said. “I love seeing the things that people do with it, where they go and what they experiment with.”

Pysanky eggs take shape layer by layer. After drawing, the visitors bobbed their eggs in the first dye, the lightest color of their palette. Once they dabbed the egg dry, the artists then picked up their kistkas and added more detail to the shell before dropping the egg in a darker color.

“It’s sort of an inside-out process,” Link explained.

Once the layers of doodling were done, visitors dropped their eggs in the darkest dye, often black, the most common finish in Ukraine, according to Link. But contrary to the Ukrainian tradition of melting the beeswax off their eggs with a candle flame, the library visitors popped their eggs in a toaster oven.

“Bringing people together is fun,” Link added. “It’s an art form anyone can do.”

Link has been drawing on and dipping eggs for 55 years. In high school, her boyfriend invited her to a friend’s pysanky party. She remembers gaping as she walked into the host’s kitchen, snacks and drinks lined up on one counter, a color wheel of dyes along the other.

“It’s musical chairs when there’s a lot of people,” Link recalled. When one artist hopped up to dye their egg, another would take their seat, sparking conversations between strangers.

Link was hooked. The next year, she hosted her own egg-dying party with her friends, and the tradition continued into annual pysanky parties in her Ashfield home. She and her husband “gutted” all the furniture, rolled up the rugs and covered the floors in rosin paper.

“It was just like an open house all day long. Sometimes, 100 people would come over the course of the day,” Link recounted.

Osterman was one of the hundred. After learning pysanky with a mutual friend, she decorated eggs at Link’s before the pair took the Ukrainian tradition to their local library three years ago, two months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Sarah Hertel-Fernandez, Belding Memorial Library’s director, said the workshop started to “show support and solidarity” with Ukraine. Although last weekend’s event was free, donations were accepted to support humanitarian relief efforts in the country.

According to a 2023 TIME article, pysanky dates back to pre-Christian times, but has evolved into a “gesture of peace” since the invasion.

Stories of the ritual’s true start vary, but Link’s handout from the now closed “SURMA - The Ukrainian Shop” in New York tells one version.

“Among Ukrainians there is a belief that the fate of the world depends upon pysanky,” the handout reads. According to lore, servants of a chained evil monster travel across the globe, tallying the number of pysanky created. “When there are few, the monster’s chains loosen, and evil flows through the world. When there are many, the monster’s chains hold taut.”

At the library, artists of all ages celebrated the ancient tradition.

“The kids are always creating,” Ashfield resident Tatiana Soper said, decorating next to her creatives, 6-year-old Baer and 8-year-old Sage. Pysanky was a shift from their favorite art, transforming “junk” from the recycling bin into houses.

Ashfield resident Ida Westley, 10, designed a dozen eggs with her mother. Eying their egg carton gallery, she chose between a brown egg with a speckled crimson mushroom, a teal starry egg, a rainbow egg and a purple egg reading “Happy Easter” to pick her favorite: a sky blue egg with clouds and a yellow sun.

But with permanent dyes, the pysanky process is a messy one.

“This is my motto: every stain is a new memory,” Ida said. Pointing to a fresh splash of green and red on her sweatshirt, she added, “This is from today.”