Colette-tions: Egg Cups
As a child, my father would bring tee shirts back from business trips as souvenirs for my sister and me. We would wear these as sleep shirts but had no great attachment to them. Beyond those shirts, I never collected a specific thing but rather a little of everything. I liked physical items as memories of places we had been but there was never any consistency to those items.
Image by Kirsten Valentini
Then in the spring of 2016, my mother and I visited my friend studying abroad in Copenhagen. There, we visited Royal Copenhagen, a Danish china manufacturer famous for their blue and white patterns. I loved all of them. We left the shop, and I dreamed of this store. I wanted it all. Days passed and as we were wandering the Copenhagen Airport, we found the duty free Royal Copenhagen kiosk. I browsed again and found the perfect souvenir of this trip. An egg cup. Blue and white china, small enough to fit in my carry-on and a single item. I didn’t need to buy multiple egg cups, one was enough. And this is how my egg cup Colette-tions was created.
Now at the time I made this purchase, I thought this was an entirely new interest for me. It was only recently that my sister reminded me of the picture book Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. The story details the eating habits of the badger, Frances. The opening illustration is this family eating soft-boiled eggs out of egg cups. I loved this book as a child and subconsciously, I think this illustration stuck with me, pulling me towards a future egg cup collection.
Bread and Jam for Frances - Illustration by Lillian Hoban
Since then, I’ve tried to find egg cups in every place I visit, a relatively hard task considering the seemingly antiquated nature of the product. That aside, I have had great success, as have my friends and family who have robustly contributed to this odd Colette-tion. I have also vastly increased my intake of soft boiled eggs since this collection began (the classic egg preparation to use an egg cup for).
Image by Kirsten Valentini