Steve discovers some familiar faces on the Clown Egg Register

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21/08/2017
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Egg painting is a tradition in the Edge household. As a child, Steve learned to blow out eggs. This is a process whereby you remove the contents of an egg, leaving you with an empty shell. Once blown out, the egg is ready for painting. Steve has passed the skill of egg blowing onto his children; every year, the Edge family spend Easter Sunday painting funny faces onto eggs.

Having honoured this tradition for decades, Steve was fascinated to subsequently discover the Clown Egg Register. In the clown community, there has always been an unwritten rule: no two clowns should share the same appearance. And so, as a way of recording the variety of unique clown faces through the ages, Stan Bult set up the Clown Egg Register in 1946. He documented each clown’s appearance by painting it onto a blown-out egg. From legendary clowns like Grimaldi to the top entertainers of the day, Bult created a comprehensive library of clown eggs which he kept in his own home, occasionally loaning the collection out for exhibitions.

In 1984, Clowns International revived the practice, turning Stan’s personal hobby into an official method for copyrighting the face designs of clowns the world over. Today, some of Stan Bult’s original eggs and a number of the more recent ceramic egg paintings can be seen at the Holy Trinity Church in Dalston. Other eggs from the register are also preserved and displayed at the Wookey Hole Clowns’ Museum in Somerset.

Ever the joker, Steve can’t wait to lay his eyes on the clown eggs. He may even paint a few of his own.

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