© Alison Day
Showing posts with label easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label easter. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 March 2016
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
Egg-actly
The Golden Cosmic Egg - Andrew Logan
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
wOL - Rebecca Sutherland
Fancy joining in? For more details visit The Big Egg Hunt.
All that Glisters - Lily Lewis
Thursday, 29 April 2010
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!
Happy Easter!
View all issues of Connections HERE (editor, designer, illustrator: 2006-2013)
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
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
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 Moscow
Kremlin Collection; five are at the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond , Virginia Britain United
States , Switzerland
and Monaco
Today descendants of the Fabergé
brothers continue creating artifacts and reproductions to keep the Fabergé name alive.
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