Exquisite eggs

At kitchen tables across the region this week, children are dyeing Easter eggs. They dissolve fizzy tablets in vinegar-scented hot water, then dip and redip, striving for pristine greens and pinks, or polkadots for the more daring, and maybe a crooked smiley face applied with a wax crayon.

Kid stuff.

If you're looking for Easter eggs with Ph.D.s, visit the Romanian Folk Art Museum, a small cultural haven at 1606 Spruce St. Here, Rodica Perciali has assembled masterpieces of the form - a thousand or so bright and beautiful eggs, painstakingly hand-decorated by Romanian artisans.

"They are renowned all over the world for their intricate designs, from the more traditionally red-and-black hand-dyed patterns to the more creative ones that have begun to emerge," Perciali said early this week, noting that though the decorators' craft is more refined each year, "they still are not losing the folk-art flavor."

Bustling around her second-floor space, the 59-year-old emigre pulls out a parade of crates and bags, all filled with lavishly painted eggs categorized by size and decorative style.

Goose and duck eggs make up most of the collection, but there are four large ostrich eggs that Perciali calls "the highlight of the exhibit." She's particularly fond of one that shows a village church surrounded by fields where tiny people are hard at work.

But she loves the smaller eggs as well. Some have traditional schematics, while others feature more contemporary pastel designs. There are gaudily beaded eggs, richly colored hand-dyed eggs, and, most elaborate of all, the waxed eggs, whose shells appear to be covered with embroidery. Decorative themes range from religious imagery to the natural world to the Statue of Liberty and the McDonald's logo.

"There's a lot of them, but they're all unique," Perciali said. "I challenge you to find two in the entire room that are the same."

Easter falls this Sunday on the Western calendar, but Perciali will keep the exhibit up until April 20, shortly before the Orthodox Easter celebrated in her homeland.

The exhibit itself is just one facet of the Romanian Folk Art Museum, which Perciali has been cultivating for the last 25 years. There are costumes, furniture, rugs, glassware, pottery and a collage illustrating the history of Romanian immigration.

Born in southeast Transylvania, Perciali came to the United States in 1981 with her husband, Michael, and daughter, Irene. Originally, they lived near Chicago, where Michael worked as an architect and Perciali taught French as well as English as a second language.

"I have great love for this country," she said. "Over the years I spoke well of the U.S. to Romanians. I would say, 'This is such a great country, we have so much to learn from it.' It's in the civic organizations, volunteering and people doing things outside of their home and profession. . . . To me the true power of this country was the people's involvement with volunteering and donating.

"Now, I'm a little disappointed that the country is not focusing on culture but on so many other aggravating things. The country spends way too much money on wars and not enough on culture."

Perciali began assembling her collection in 1983 and eventually took it on the road, to conventions and exhibitions all over Illinois. When she and her family relocated to Princeton in 1998, she purchased the Spruce Street property and converted two apartments into museum space. Although renting out the other apartments in the building has helped, she says the museum nevertheless has become a financial drain on her family of some $4,000 a month.

In an effort to offset that, Perciali holds sales from her gallery, and in the next month will be focusing on the decorated eggs (duck eggs go for $12 to $20, the larger goose eggs for $35). And she plans to auction off the one closest to her heart - the huge ostrich egg with the village church scene.

That said, it's not the money shortfall that bothers Perciali most about her museum's plight - it's the lack of interest. She says Philadelphia has not been as responsive to ethnic events as, in her words, the more "public- oriented" Chicago. Even worse, she hasn't received much support from Romanians - official or otherwise.

She attributes that to a cultural disconnect, saying many Romanian immigrants wouldn't care about a nonprofit because "they are not used to volunteering and donating, since galleries and museums are run by the state back home."

So she soldiers on. "I feel responsible to make up for their absence. That's my stress. If I give up, who will do it? I'm a teacher by profession, so maybe I'm more prone to think of the next generation. I can't give up on it. This represents the whole country of Romania. Maybe I was too idealistic, but this is my heritage. It has value and deserves to be preserved."

But after 25 years, she is tired, and sometimes thinks about giving up the whole enterprise. "My hope now is that some retired women may like to volunteer to help out here," she said. ". . . It's too hard for me to be here alone and to promote an entire country by myself."

Yet ideas still bubble out of her - starting a round-table cultural discussion group, perhaps, or launching a Transylvanian village, a sort of Romanian Williamsburg. It's just a matter of getting others to hear her out and share her enthusiasm.

"With the popularity of Dracula, Romania is well-known here," she said. "It's a pity that Romanians aren't making better use of that popularity. If we had a Transylvanian village here, it would be great!"