Mad About Jewellery Blog

Chocoholic Paradise

Posted on 30 March 2010

I don’t know about your local supermarket, but at mine has been transformed into a choc fest, with discounted Easter Eggs creating a high and very precarious Guard of Honour on either side of the entrance. Yes. It’s that time of year again when there’s another brilliant excuse to move-on-up a dress size in just 24 hours, as you break into everything from Belgian and Thornton versions to Cadbury’s mini eggs.

So what’s the origin of Easter Egg?
Historians have traced the origin of the word “Easter” to the Scandinavian word ‘Ostra’ and the German ‘Ostern’ or ‘Eastre’.   Both are derived from the names of mythological goddesses of spring and fertility, who are celebrated at the Spring Equinox, when the length of day and night are equal.  Throughout history, many ancient cultures celebrated this as a time of birth and renewal, following the darkness of the long winter.
Which came first the Easter Bunny or the Easter Egg?
The earthly symbol for both Spring Goddesses was the rabbit, the symbol of new life and it is thought that the legend of the Easter Bunny originated in Germany and spread to the New World in the 17th century. Children believed the Easter Bunny would leave them coloured eggs if they were good and left out their Easter bonnets and caps for the gifts.

Egg Art
In England, Easter eggs have been coloured and decorated from earliest times. Indeed, in Edward I’s household accounts for 1307 there is an entry of:

“18 pence for 450 eggs to be boiled and dyed or covered with gold leaf and distributed to the Royal household”.

By the 18th century, it had become fashionable to hide small gifts in pasteboard or papier-maché eggs.  By the 19th century cardboard eggs covered with silk, lace or velvet and fastened with ribbon were fashionable. And in later years, craftsmen made artificial eggs of silver and gold, ivory or porcelain, often inlaid with jewels.
Of course, the ultimate Easter egg-shaped gifts have to be the fabulous be-jewelled creations by Carl Fabergé.  The first, featuring a small gold egg in an outside shell of platinum and enamel was made in 1883 as an Easter gift for Tsar Alexander to give to his wife, the Empress Marie of Russia.  Today, these superb creations are worth millions and are precious museum pieces.

Old habits dye hard!
If you think all this dyeing and painting is a thing of the past, think again.  In Europe today the old art of decorating the real egg is still very much alive, with many eggs dyed red to symbolise Christ’s blood.

The chocolate Easter egg is born
The modern chocolate Easter egg owes its existence to the two greatest developments in the history of chocolate. One. The invention by the Dutch inventor, Van Houten in 1828 of a press for separating cocoa butter from the cocoa bean.  And two, the introduction of pure cocoa by Cadbury Brothers in 1866.  The earliest Cadbury chocolate eggs were made of ‘dark’ chocolate with a plain smooth surface and were filled with dragees. The earliest ‘decorated eggs’ were plain shells enhanced by chocolate piping and marzipan flowers.

By 1893, with decorative skills vastly improved, there were no less than 19 different lines on the Cadbury Brothers UK Easter list, with many of Richard Cadbury’s designs based on French, Dutch and German originals adapted to Victorian tastes. The  “crocodile” finish, which breaks up the smooth surface, came from Germany and was instantly adopted by chocolate manufacturers, as by breaking up the smooth surface, it disguises minor imperfections

The launch in 1905 of the famous Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate made a major contribution to the Easter egg market, converting most consumers to milk chocolate  and turning Easter eggs into seasonal best sellers.

Now you’ve got the facts, you can enjoy your choc fest all the more.
Alternatively, for a less fattening Easter Egg, take a hollow chocolate egg and add any one of our 2,000 pieces of jewellery.  Or, for a non-fattening Easter Egg, place the jewellery in a decorative cardboard or plastic egg.

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