This Web Provide Creative egg decor brings home the bacon

Creative egg decor brings home the bacon

Aug. 24, 2002

Think back a minute to the days as a kid when you'd color Easter eggs around the kitchen table with one of those store-bought kits of tablet dyes, wax crayon and wire dipper.

Now, put it out of your head - completely. This is a story about some serious egg decorating, like nothing you remember.

So creatively, in fact, that egg shells have paved a pathway from her home studio in Menomonee Falls to the governor's mansion in Madison and the White House.

A delicate little chicken egg, all dressed up in pink and purple and peek-through-the-shell lattice work with a perching robin inside, is her latest ticket to the White House for next spring's annual Easter egg roll. Fairgoers at the recent Wisconsin State Fair voted her egg art their favorite, sending her on her way.

This is familiar territory for Runge. Her egg creation in 2000 was on display in the Clinton White House, along with eggs from the other 49 states. She also displayed her ethnic egg collection from other countries for 40,000 visitors that year on Embassy Row in Washington as part of the day's events. A repeat performance in 2001 was canceled because of rain and again this year because of White House security concerns after Sept. 11.

In years gone by, Runge's eggs have hung on Christmas trees in the Wisconsin's governor's mansion, and they'll be there again in December. She's organized the "traditions" display at the governor's Easter egg hunt for eight years, too, bringing her ethnic eggs along for show. She'll do so again next spring.

Never mind that old joke about which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Runge knows eggs-actly which came first.

Eggs and more eggs

Soon after leading poultry projects for her 4-H group, she began working with the kids on egg art because she had to do something with all those eggs.

Since she's not one to jump into a project unarmed, Runge first took a seminar on egg decorating - the thing that eventually hatched a decades-long love of egg art and a national reputation in that field.

"I've always painted, since childhood on," she said. "I bought my first set of oil paints from baby-sitting money." She took periodic art classes to hone her talent, and her work evolved from oil to acrylics to China painting to watercolors to painting on eggs.

"I just changed canvasses," she said. Today, the canvas might be anything from huge ostrich and emu eggs to goose and swan eggs to tiny parakeet and finch eggs.

When she first started, she chipped away at egg shells with a manicure scissors. Today, she uses a high-powered dentist's drill for her intricate patterns. Decades ago, it took 24 hours to dry a glued element before moving on to the next step. Today, glue dries instantaneously.

When all three of her children were in college, she traveled the country teaching techniques she developed. For awhile, she judged egg art at national shows. As she did more, she learned more. That fueled her desire to collect eggs from other cultures, and then to give lectures on the topic of egg art.

"I always made eggs to give away, and to teach," she said. A friend suggested she turn it into a business, so she did in 1982 - Eggs Prima Donna. Besides selling her egg art, the business promotes lectures she gives.

Simple and sublime

Much of her most elaborate work is commissioned and costs hundreds of dollars. The most expensive, she said, was worth about $1,000. Her "bread-and-butter" business is in egg ornaments that sell for from $9 to $35.

People want eggs decorated to fit in their own collections, such as the East Coast lawyer who collected frogs and got himself an elaborately carved egg with an outdoor scene of deer in the background and frogs and a lily pond in the foreground. She's done wedding cake toppers, anniversary eggs and even one bejeweled with emeralds and pearls.

On a first-name basis now with former Gov. Tommy Thompson, she made for him what she calls "the most expensive paper-clip holder." Outside, it is covered with historic stamps. Its hinged top opens to reveal an inside covered entirely in gold leaf and filled with gold paper clips. After Sept. 11, she sent the governor an egg with an American flag and an eagle's head, a tear falling from its eye. Continue to learn more about egg art, please visit JS Online.