Eggs come first

Farha Sayeed wouldn’t discard egg shells in a hurry.

Two porcelain horses pull a tiny carriage, a perfect oval in blush pink, sitting on ornate gold wheels, its edges trimmed with pink jewels and delicate gold tracery, with a princess sitting inside, fanning herself as she reclines on brocade-edged seats. A scene from a fairytale book? No, it’s a specimen of Farha Sayeed’s ‘egg art’ — a form of art that involves embellishing, or intricately cutting and carving real eggs of birds such as ostriches, emus, geese, ducks, turkey, guinea, fowl or hens, and then embellishing them with pearls, beads, crystals, brocade, velvet, satin, golden lace or rhinestone chain.

It’s an ‘art’ few people in India have heard of, but internationally it’s fairly well known, as a specialist craft/hobby in the same league as, say, petit point or origami. Some forms of egg art such as Pysansky, as the Ukrainian art of decorating eggs is known, have been around for 2,000 years, while Faberge eggs in Russia and decoupage ostrich eggs in Africa are cottage industries. There is even an International Egg Art Guild with more than 2,000 members. Sayeed is its only Indian member, which lends credence to her claim of being the only egg artist in India, and of her upcoming show, Eggxotica in New Delhi, as being the first of its kind.

Sayeed grew up in Hyderabad, learning arts such as tile- and glass-painting, aluminium foil work, silk dye painting and soft-toy making. She came to egg art only around a decade ago in Qatar where her husband, a diplomat, was posted. “A friend had a few pieces,” she says, “and I became interested. She taught me the basics, how to clean the eggs, how to disinfect them and so on.” The finer points Sayeed has taught herself through websites and web-groups dedicated to egg art.

But aren’t eggs too delicate to carve? “No, no,” Sayeed dimples a denial. “The eggs of hens do have delicate shells, but the eggs of ostriches and emus are large and hard. In Africa, they even use them to store water.”

She’s had four exhibitions in Saudi Arabia and Denmark; her website also showcases her handiwork and helps her get commissions. It’s only in the past two years, after her husband was posted in India and allotted a flat here, that she has had the time to put together a body of work for an exhibition in India.

Sayeed now wants to propagate the art in India, hoping the publicity and interest her exhibition will generate will get her students.

While Sayeed does the usual formations — the egg tree, the pram, the carriage, jewellery case and so on — she’s also tried to innovate by carving Persian characters on the eggs. One ostrich egg has ‘Allah’ etched on one end, and ‘Mohammed’ on the other; another has ‘Mashallah’ inscribed on it in a large font. She also once tried to make a Rajasthani doli (carriage), with a tiny princess peeping out of its open doors. She would like to introduce Indian themes in her works, but “most suppliers of accessories — the little stand that you see here, the porcelain stump of that egg there, the delicate door hinges — are European. I have tried to find Indian suppliers here in Delhi, but the quality is just not good enough.”

Sayeed imports all her accessories for decoration, specialist tools of her trade such as the compressed air drill, even the eggs from abroad, from approved egg-art suppliers abroad. “The US and Europe, of course, but Africa is a huge destination for eggs, and I often order as many as 22 eggs in one consignment. That’s because you don’t get eggs throughout the year. Only unfertilised eggs can be used for egg art, and breeders wait for all the eggs to hatch before they supply.” There’s all the expense of importing eggs, of course, but add to that also the hassle of clearing the parcel through customs, explaining exactly why she needs so many emptied eggs. Not to speak of having to laboriously clean and disinfect all of them so that they can be kept aside for use later.

“It’s a very time-consuming art, one piece sometimes taking as long as two weeks to execute,” says Sayeed, explaining why her pricing — from Rs 7,000 to Rs 1 lakh — can be steep. But with three young boys, how did she ever have the time to concentrate on her art? “My husband and boys are very supportive. I could leave things lying about and they would never touch it,” she says. Not so are a number of visitors who have horrified Sayeed with the way they have knocked their knuckles against the egg-shells, asking, “Isn’t this brittle?”

A BASIC GUIDE TO EGG ART

Only infertile eggs are used for egg art and there are supplies who source these.

The eggs, which have been emptied out through a hole at the bottom, need to be cleaned thoroughly with soap water before they can be used.

There are many forms of egg art.

Decoupage is popular in Africa and refers to embellishments using colour paper, often greeting card, cutouts, adding special paint effects, gold leaf, and so on.

‘Lacing’ is another and refers to cutting designs on the egg shell using a drill.

Then there is sculpting which involves removing layers of the shell in specific patterns to expose the colours beneath. The emu egg, for example, is a dark, blackish green on top, under which is a lighter, teal green, and white inside.