The Art of the Easter Egg
in a boiling pot of beets, Jon B Swerens via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
When I was a kid, coloring Easter eggs was quite a project. It wasn't so much that coloring
the eggs was difficult, it was just that I always wanted them to be "artistic" and so a relatively simple project became an ordeal. I was never satisfied with just dropping the entire egg into one of the cups filled with warm water and vinegar, tinted with one of the six color dyes that came with the egg coloring kit. I wanted a variety of color on that egg, or a special pattern, and I wasn't satisfied with the greasy, dye resistant crayons that came in the package, which were supposed to provide you with an additional avenue of visual expression. And, forget those decals - geez, they were so, well, cheesy. This artistic awakening started at the young age of, oh, say six or seven, and it was the beginning of a life filled with creative inspiration, tension and frustration.
My grandmother, the hardest working woman I ever knew, was from "the old country."
No fancy, store bought dyes for her. No, she was perfectly happy to throw dried onion skins that she'd preserved in the pantry just for this occassion, into a pot of boiling water, put in a dozen or more eggs, and voilà the white shell turned a light amber, or purple if she put in beets. The eggs came out hardboiled and dyed, and you got some soup out of the deal to boot. She could never understand why my sister and I took all that time to try and make our eggs look like "the fancy, rich peoples," when all you did was crack the shell into a thousand pieces anyway. She was a very practical, no nonsense woman.
flickr; Basket of Russian Easter eggs, dawn mary via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
I really envied our Russian neighbors. I didn't quite understand why they didn't celebrate
Easter on the same weekend that my family did, but it didn't matter because their eggs were the eggs I aspired to. I couldn't figure out how they could create something so beautiful on a hard boiled egg. I mean, they got them from the same corner grocery we did, and they boiled them just like my mother, but something happened after that, because their eggs were transformed while ours always looked like they came from a kit.
flickr; Fabrege, Peacock egg, 1908, black stena via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Years later I saw an Easter egg to end ALL Easter eggs. By this time I was in New York,
and one day I visited the Forbes Building on 5th Avenue just south of 14th Street. There I beheld the egg of my dreams. It took the artistry, talent and skill of a Russian jeweler, backed by an incredibly wealthy client, to create the magnificent Fabergé egg. I hadn't colored an Easter egg in decades, but I felt the stirrings of my past when I saw those opulent oval-shaped objects. I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't seen them when I was a little kid, I would have been a nervous wreck every Easter, trying to figure out how our eggs could end up looking like the Tsar's eggs. And, I realized that my grandmother had been right all along, the best eggs were for the fancy, rich peoples.
We won't be posting tomorrow, Friday the 10th, and not because it's Good Friday, but
because we're taking an 8 day trip to Paris. We're visiting our niece and exploring places we haven't seen on prior visits. So next week we'll post our Parisian diary of photos, along with some thoughts and observations about each days adventures in the City of Light. Au revoir et salut.
Posted by designslinger at 4/9/2009 5:00 AM 
Categories: Ephemera, Decorative Arts
Tags: Faberge Forbes Russian Orthodox Easter Easter egg coloring
Categories: Ephemera, Decorative Arts
Tags: Faberge Forbes Russian Orthodox Easter Easter egg coloring
I love hearing your thoughts. It's like traveling back in time. You have much to say and, well, ...I'm a fan.