sketches and lines

It has often puzzled me, when seeing a number of egg-shells lying upon the kitchen table, why the ingenious fancy-worker has not oftener tried her skill upon an article so beautifully and symmetrically modelled by Nature, and which it would be no waste of material to persevere upon to make up into articles both useful and ornamental. We always admire in the egg its fitness to its purpose, and the arrangement by which the greatest possible strength with the least expenditure of material is acquired.

One description of ornamentation is that acquired by the tolerably well-known process of colouring for presentation as Easter offering. But this process is attended with great uncertainty, inasmuch as the results are scarcely to be measured by the means of which use is made; still, in its uncertainty, there are great advantages at times which occur from the accidental markings of colour, which are sometimes exceedingly effective. I will now give a few ways which have been tried by my friends.

One tells me to take a clean egg, rub a little arnatto (a cheap buff dye, to be obtained at any chemist’s) on one or two places, drop a little finely-powdered cochineal on one…

Extract from The Popular Recreator, Topic: Ornamental Eggs, section ii, page 46.