Egg Art Show Delights Even the Hard-Boiled

Six-year-old Nathan Anderson of Camarillo looked with wonder at the meticulously decorated ostrich egg.

What was once yolk and membrane had been turned into a tiny carriage, complete with hinged doors and turning wheels.

“I like the coach the best, with the door on the carriage and all of the moving parts,” he said, looking to his mother, Sally Anderson.

But the decorated egg--one of scores of intricately crafted pieces at the California Egg Artistry Show & Sale offered for $100 or more--was a bit too pricey for Anderson.

“The most I ever spent on one is $75,” she said. “It was hand-painted and cut. I liked the fine, gorgeous pen strokes.”

Dozens of dealers, suppliers and egg artisans gathered at the Westlake Hyatt hotel for the 19th annual egg artistry show, which drew more than 2,500 people over the three-day event that ended Sunday.

Some dealers were bringing in thousands of dollars for hand-dyed eggs and other wares that took weeks or months to create.

“I had to make the whole mechanism by hand,” said Jay Peterson, a retired salesman from Santa Maria who fashioned a working carousel from an eight-inch-wide ostrich egg. “It took me a year.”

The carousel won first prize in the mechanical egg category in the 1993 show, Peterson said. It is worth between $6,000 and $10,000, he said, but he is unwilling to part with it at any price.

“I don’t think I’d ever be able to make another one,” Peterson said of the carousel egg, which features a cassette deck underneath that plays classical music while tiny ponies turn and lift up and down.

“We get more enjoyment out of watching it than from the money.”

Director Benny Cotinola, who has promoted the California event for four years, said people have been decorating eggs for centuries.

“Eggs have been around since heaven knows when,” said Cotinola, who also promotes a national egg event each fall. “There’s a meaning behind it, and that’s the giving of life. It’s just an attraction that people have always had.”

Lompoc artist Frances-Jane Longley added: “From ancient Chinese times, people have always done eggs. The Chinese say the world started from eggs. And how do I know, maybe it did.”

Angela Ammann, an Oxnard escrow assistant, said she has been crafting art from eggs for more than five years. Her hobby grew from decorating Easter eggs as a young girl.

On Sunday, she had a special reason for attending the show.

“My brother’s getting married in June and he wanted me to create a centerpiece for the wedding table reception,” she said. “That’ll be my gift to him and his wife.”

Artist Sally Osti, who owns the Eggs Cetera gallery in Sylmar, said the annual California Egg Artistry Show is among the most popular on the circuit. “It’s that time of year for eggs,” she said, referring to the upcoming Easter holiday.

Osti feels lucky that more of her eggs were not damaged in the Jan. 17 earthquake that was centered just miles from her shop.

“My store looked like a salt-and-pepper shaker, but most of the eggs survived,” she said. “Three boxes of unpainted eggs crashed into a wall but prevented more of the eggs from getting broken.”

Osti said she works mainly with quail, ostrich, goose and duck eggs, painting detailed images of penguins, giraffes and other animals onto the waxed surfaces.

“Right now, wolves are very in,” said Osti, who attends between 15 and 20 egg shows a year but has steady clients in gift shops at Disneyland and Sea World.

At Mary and Tommy Pruett’s table, unpainted green emu eggs were selling for $25 each.

“They’re pretty hard to come by,” said Tommy Pruett, who traveled with his wife from Austin, Tex., to attend the show. “They’re from Australia, and there aren’t that many breeders and hatchers here in the United States.”

As Pruett spoke, Anderson ambled by his table with her son, Nathan. This time, she could not resist plunking down $25 for the olive-green emu egg from Down Under.

“It’s from Australia,” she said. “And this is as close as I’ll ever get to there.”