Rosamond Purcell on Common Murre eggs

Rosamond Purcell, Wunderkammer-keeper and amazing photographer of curiosities and collections, contributed a short piece to McSweeney's that's tied to her latest book, Egg & Nest. The marvelous book couples Purcell's images celebrating the exquisite form and color of eggs with essays about egg collecting, ecology, conservation, and biology. In McSweeney's, Rosamond comments on the calligraphy-like markings on eggs of the Common Murre.

From McSweeney's:

The calligraphic effects so pronounced on blackbird eggs may appear over the entire surface of the shell on certain eggs of the Common Murre (above left), dancing and twisting in lines reminiscent of Japanese writing or Chinese brush painting, executed with flourish and grace. In the example below I photographed the circumference of this egg one section at a time. Then, my husband Dennis and I assembled the pieces into a "Mercator" projection (above right).

The effect of stitching together these slices creates a large mural of acrobatic monkeys swinging from vines, a young chimp riding a unicycle, gibbons in free-fall. But then, looking again, a "vine" becomes the outline of the back of a bull, emerging now like an ancient creature from the walls of Lascaux. I begin to think about the connections between avian and human art.

"Eggs And Bacon" essay at McSweeney's

Buy Egg & Nest

[#1 posted by bunnie, June 17, 2009 11:31 AM]

we have this book, it certainly fits in with a directory of wonderful things.

[#2 posted by Takuan, June 17, 2009 11:56 AM]

that's amazing! When my eye fell on the image, before reading the article, "Lascaux" came to mind.

[#3 posted by Takuan, June 17, 2009 11:58 AM]

see?
http://www.les-tourterelles.com/images/LASCAUX1.jpg

[#4 posted by Chang, June 17, 2009 12:39 PM]

I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Purcell as she was a customer of the video store I worked at (Hollywood Express! Word up, North Cambridge!). She's awesome in person and her pictures are, too!

[#5 posted by Anonymous, June 17, 2009 7:47 PM]

So, this egg is a map of the cosmos?

[#6 posted by J France, June 17, 2009 8:08 PM]

Takuan, I thought of exactly the same thing, but more along the lines of "dem paintings da rocks in Francey land, guuuuh".

Beautiful stuff!

[#7 posted by Laslo Paniflex, June 17, 2009 8:12 PM]

Murre eggs have that pointed shape so they can't roll off a cliff face. If they are bumped they roll in a tight circle.

[#8 posted by Takuan, June 17, 2009 8:42 PM]

I remember finding killdeer eggs
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/459509572_36e7d55db1.jpg?v=0

The same shape adaptation but more to keep them in the vicinity of the crummy, flat little nest on a gravel road they built on. The mommy bird did the whole "look at me I've got a broken wing" routine to lure us away from the eggs and after it was flagged with bright orange tape to keep people from running over them, she took every scrap away and restored the perfect camouflage. Hatched them and disposed of the egg fragments so quickly it was if they were never there.

[#9 posted by Darren Garrison, June 17, 2009 10:04 PM]

"The eggs evoke works of modern art, which also often seem to have been pulled out of someone's ass."

[#10 posted by hassan-i-sabbah, June 18, 2009 3:45 AM]

Eggs by Brion Gysin.

[#11 posted by ndollak, June 18, 2009 4:30 AM]

"Alone with her at last... in a room full of eggs."

--- subtitle from a very funny film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Wrong Box."

[#12 posted by David Pescovitz, June 18, 2009 6:34 AM]

HASSAN @10, Totally.

[#13 posted by Harvard_Press, June 18, 2009 6:52 AM]

Harvard Press has a great slide show of photographs from Egg & Nest. Definitely worth a look:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/puregg/index.html