This page is a showcase of my mother's carved, painted, and decorated eggs. She uses a dental style air driven turbine drill for most of her work. Some of her creations were given as gifts, so these images may be the best/only we have. She has an entire curio cabinet packed with eggs though. I may someday get better images of those. For now, most of the pictures have been taken with a potato! Sorry! :P
Please note that as most of the eggs are on stands, the images will naturally be in portrait orientation... This will be a fairly long page! Enjoy!
This is the "Fairy Dragon", which just so happens to be my favorite of my mother's carved eggs. The detail here shows the glass dragon (with gold details) guarding it's "eggs". The blue "roses" and the blue "foliage" are quite nice, and well, every element carries or compliments the overall blue color theme. This is one of her finest works, and I figure I may as well start with a bang! The header image, is of course, the full front view of the Fairy Dragon.
Back of the Fairy Dragon egg. Again... This is my FAVORITE egg. Seriously. It's beautiful! The mesh filling in the large open spaces really is quite nice too. Every detail of this egg seems to compliment each other.
Anniversary Egg front and back
Anniversary Egg Open
Brads Wolf, carved on Emu egg. Emu eggs have different colored layers, so you can get three tone images based on the depth of carving. You'll see this frequently with Emu eggs... This is not painted!
A wide Celtic Knot pattern, carved on an ostrich egg.
Chief Sleepy Eye (Ish Tak Ha Ba)
Named for his droopy eyelids, Chief Sleepy Eye, or Ish Tak Ha Ba in his own tongue, was a Native American chief of the Sisseton Dakota tribe. He held that position from 1824 though the remainder of his life, when he passed away in 1859. Chief Sleepy Eye was known not for being a hunter or warrior, but for the friendships he established with explorers, traders, missionaries and government officials. He favored peace and friendship with the white man, and though the white man took advantage of the natives, he never gave up hope that natives and whites would find peace.
In his drive for peace and friendship, he was a member of the delegation of Dakota and Ojibway leaders who went to Washington DC in 1824 to meet with President James Monroe to sign treaties that they hoped would bring about a compromise between cultures, and ultimately peace. He was a signer of at least four different treaties with the United States government, and was probably the most important Chief to sign the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851, a task he did so reluctantly, for what it would cost his people. Sadly, he'd seen what the white man could, and would do, and wanted peace more than any amount of land.
He died in either 1859 or 1860 in South Dakota, and was buried there. In 1898 his remains were found and in 1902 they were moved to the town of Sleepy Eye. The town was both the last place he called home, and named after him. He was buried in a plot that had been set aside for the purpose, next to the then newly built depot. A granite obelisk serves as the monument marking his grave site.
Carved on an Emu egg.
"Crystal City" was made of leftover discs cut out of other eggs. For a while, my mother made potpourri eggs, which were turkey eggs with three discs cut out, filled with fragrant potpourri, contained by mesh (similar to the Fairy Dragon, and then decorated. These were easy eggs to make, and could be made in large numbers (It helped having local turkey farms too). The unused segments were piling up, and they were all identical. My mother glued them together to form a single "super egg" that was larger than even an ostrich egg. Each shell segment had scroll patterns cut into them. Due to the size, a rather copious application of an epoxy like coating was used for reinforcement. Unfortunately, the spaces of the scroll work are not very wide, and could have actually been made wider. The thing is solid with that coating, but it's hard to see the interior. The whole thing can be picked up by the egg, in fact! We would certainly do it differently, had we the option to do it again. More negative space.
The interior is filled with crystals arranged in a symmetrical manner, and illuminated with LEDs. Interestingly enough, My mother and I attended a show in North Dakota dedicated to egg carving and decorating. The power went out, and because our table was not near power, I had powered all my mother's illuminated eggs with batteries. In a gymnasium filled with fragile eggs, we were the only source of light. It certainly got people's attention! :)
We have always talked of reworking this one, to make the interior more visible, but never did. The central globe is the only crystal illuminated by non red light. depending on the angle, it will illuminate in green and yellow light as well. The prevalence of red LEDs are simply an indication of the technology at the time. Bright LEDs of other colors were available, but still cost more, and we did not have blue LEDs yet, at that time.
This is the curio egg. The egg features a small shelf, filled with tiny cloth flowers and glass figures. It was carved from an ostrich egg.
The back is decorated with a gold theme, just as the interior.
The curio egg stands out, because the glass swan can be rotated, activating a dimmer that illuminates the interior with yellow LEDs. If you detach the swan from the dimmer knob, you can hinge up the base, to reveal a battery compartment.
"Easter Morning"
A piece celebrating the joy of Easter!
Emu Jewelry Box
"Heart Spiral"
"Katelynns Treasure"
"Little Lattice"
"Little Rosa"
Relief carved ostrich egg.
"Lone Eagle"
Carved ostrich egg.
"Majestic Patriot"
An egg celebrating American independence and freedom.
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