Fowl Crest

Shield by Alison Day

© Alison Day 

Alison Day Design 

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The Art of Chocolate

Fabulous designs by : Enric Rovira Xocolates of Barcelona
And... the traditional method.

Egg-actly

The Golden Cosmic Egg - Andrew Logan

If you're looking for something to do over Easter, why not join the biggest Easter egg hunt organized by UK jeweller Fabergé?


200 eggs have been specially designed by artists and designers, such as Andrew Logan, Vivienne Westwood and Mark Quinn etc. for the occasion. They will be expertly hidden (during Lent), somewhere in one of the 12 zones of London and you have to find them.

Angel Hatching - Anita Klein

With maps, clues and descriptions of the eggs at your disposal, all you have to do is find one, text its unique keyword to 80001, and, you will automatically be entered into a competition, where a special Diamond Jubilee Egg worth $100,000 British pounds, is the prize.

Union Jack - Mark Shand

Also, The Big Egg Hunt is aiming to break the current Guinness World Record title for: the most participants in an Egg hunt.

wOL - Rebecca Sutherland

Once over (March 20), all the eggs will be auctioned off for charity.
Fancy joining in? For more details visit The Big Egg Hunt. 

All that Glisters - Lily Lewis

Easter & the Moon Rabbit

This year, as you casually bite off the ears (or other extremity) of a chocolate bunny, have you ever asked yourself as to why a rabbit (or hare) is part of the Easter celebrations?

If you want to go down the most obvious path the Easter bunny has its origin in pre-Christian fertility lore. The Hare and the Rabbit were the most fertile animals known and served as symbols of the new life during the Spring season.

The German settlers, who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1700s, were the ones who introduced the Easter bunny to American folklore. The arrival of the ‘Oschter Haws’ was considered ‘childhood's greatest pleasure’, (after Santa Claus of course). The children believed that if they were good the ‘Oschter Haws’, would lay a nest of coloured eggs and built their ‘nest’, using a cap/bonnet, which has led to the later tradition of the more elaborate Easter basket. In those days Easter bunnies were made of pastry and sugar and not of chocolate.

But according to some, Easter is not really a solar festival but rather one of the moon, the measurer of our days. Many eastern artists have depicted the moon with rabbits racing across its face. In one such story Buddha places Rabbit in the moon as payment for a favour in which Rabbit voluntarily gave himself as food for one of Buddha's hungry friends. An honorary position, for the full moon is seen as the destroyer of darkness or ‘sign of new life and messenger of immortality’ (Hillard).

A more important connection can be found exclusively within the hare, which unlike the rabbit is born with his eyes open. The Egyptians called the hare Un, which meant ‘open, to open, the opener’. Un also meant period. Thus the rabbit became a symbol for periodicity in both the lunar and human sense of the word. The hare as ‘opener’ symbolized the New Year at Easter, fertility and the beginning of new life within the young.

Happy Easter!

© Alison Day

Alison Day Design 

First published in the Connections magazine #15 Spring 2007 

Fabulous Fabergé Eggs

Easter marks the re-awakening of life and the fact that Spring is already in full swing after the long deathly months of winter. In its religious context this is reflected by the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after his crucifixion.

At Easter time the egg has long been given as a gift, symbolizing rebirth and fertility. Often, this is in its simplest form as a savory food courtesy of the chicken. Its more popular counterpart is sweet and generally made out of chocolate. In most cases the egg is decorated, painted or wrapped in brightly coloured foils. Hidden on the eve of Easter by the elusive Easter Bunny, and hunted for by excited children the next day in Easter egg hunts. This festival is one of the more delightful ones in the calendar year.

Historically there has been another genre of egg that was given at Easter, which although quite inedible was at the same time quite fabulous in its design and execution. These eggs were the Fabergé eggs, brainchild of Peter Carl Fabergé and his brother, Agathon.

This series of eggs were crafted in the workshops of the House of Fabergé between 1885 and 1917, having been commissioned by the Russian tsars, Alexander III and Nicholas II for their wives as annual Easter gifts.

Peter Carl Fabergé was trained as a jeweler and goldsmith and although his hand cannot actually be attributed to any of the Fabergé eggs, his membership of the merchant’s guild meant that he had access to the best designers and craftsmen around to execute his artistic vision. It was through this that he was able to build up the company founded by his father into one of international repute, creating artifacts influenced by ancient styles as well as the then more modern art nouveau. This put the house of Fabergé on a par with the American Tiffany & Co. The eggs were produced at the rate of one a year until 1917 when the October Revolution led to the demise of the imperial family, and Fabergé fled to Switzerland where he lived to the end of his life in 1920. It is said that the Bolsheviks gave Fabergé ten minutes to take his hat and leave.

The ingenuity and beauty of the eggs did not stop with the amazing enameling; precious jewels, metals and guilloche décor of its outside, but concealed an equally magnificent surprise inside. The first Fabergé egg, made to the delight of the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna’s (the whereabouts of which remains a mystery to this day) was a plain white egg with a simple gold band round the outside. The removable gold yolk within produced a multicolored hen with engraved feathers and rubies for eyes sitting on a nest. By pushing the beak upwards two more surprises were revealed; a tiny ruby egg-shaped pendant suspended inside a replica of a diamond set replica of the Imperial crown.

There are said to be a total of fifty Imperial Easter Eggs in the world, including the nine owned by the Russian energy tycoon Victor Vekselberg. He bought the eggs from the Forbes family collection auctioned at Sotheby’s; with a view to returning to Russia part of its cultural heritage. Ten can be found in the Moscow Kremlin Collection; five are at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. Britain's Queen Elizabeth owns three. Others are in the United States, Switzerland and Monaco. The whereabouts of eight is still unknown.

Today descendants of the Fabergé brothers continue creating artifacts and reproductions to keep the Fabergé name alive.

© Alison Day

Alison Day Design

First published in the Connections magazine #11 Spring 2006