Lately I undertook repairs on a group of painted Czech Easteregg shells. I couldn't resist the challenge. When I got the shells I wasn't even sure how many eggs would be made out of the pieces. This first picture shows them after the project was started. If you look carefully at the picture you might see how tiny strips of rolling paper are helping to build up the broken bits with the help of ordinary carpenter's glue.
The box of egg shards contained sheets of what looked like cigarette rolling paper. This sort of paper takes up moisture very easily but resists tearing. Oddly enough, it's inclusion in the box of shells inspired me to figure out this way of holding the shells together without filling them entirely with a backing material.
Longer strips of the paper helped to bridge gaps and eventually supported a plaster in-fill. Then the eggs were in-painted within limits of the plaster fill. The white eggs were quite grey from dirt and were cleaned.
Here are the finished eggs - front and back. The yellow is an original intact yellow varnish. The white eggs have unusual scenes on one side. The egg on the left appears to depict a wedding between a rabbit and a cat (?) with an attendant rabbit horn player. The one on the left has a rabbit gardener in a pine grove going towards a building (church?) with a wheelbarrow.
