Lorinda's Egg Creations
Lorinda's Egg Creations - Photos and Short Biography
This story is about Lorinda Lutz, my mother, and craft enthusiast. Her creations are modern day egg designs that do not have the precious jewels of the famous Faberge eggs, but certainly the care to detail and love of craft that the famous ones have.
Lorinda's eggs have amassed into a large collection that is occupying many glassed cabinets and storage boxes. Eggs rotate out of storage and back again, depending on the time of year.
The one unique thing about these eggs is that they all are actual bird eggs. All sizes of eggs have passed her designing hands. Quail, chicken, goose, rhea, emu and ostrich. All these birds have added to the collection.
This page is for all Lorinda's eggs except Christmas.
Enjoy the tour of Lorinda's egg creations and beautiful collection.
Purple Ostrich and Goose Eggs
Gaylord MN. rental farm. Lorinda at age 14 with her sister Ruth.
Lorinda My Mother
Lorinda Clara Martha Abraham is 92 years old. If you knew her you would think, "She is so cute." My Dad was called cute once in his older years and that was not for him. His response was, "You spend your life being tough and in the end you are cute?" That made Rendy laugh. My Dad always had one liners or comparisons that made Mom laugh.
Lorinda does have a quick sense of humor and will respond with a familiar little laugh.
My mother grew up and was born in Gaylord, MN, a small farm town. It has grown a little as far as population. It is the seat of Sibley County, but if you want a supermarket you have to drive to Mankato.
She was born in 1922 and is the youngest of five. Her dad John Abraham died of pneumonia when she was five.
The family moved from their white two story house on a corner in town to a rental farm just outside of town at the opposite side of Titlow Lake.
Her mother Martha and the two boys, Melvin and Harry farmed and raised livestock and managed their way through the early years of the depression. Sisters Ruth and Violet worked hard in the house and adjoining farmyard tending the small animals. Two siblings, Harry and Violet farmed their whole lives in Gaylord. The middle 1990s I witnessed Reuben, Violet's husband thank Harry for all the enjoyable years they had farming together.
My grandmother Martha died when my mother was 14. Martha had been the town go to for crochet advice. Lorinda had graduated from Immanuel Lutheran School at the eight grade and she spent her teens and early twenties with her Mom on the farm, with Harry and his wife Dolores using the the bottom floor of the house as their flat.
Lorinda moved to St. Paul and stayed with her sister Ruth, 10 years older and married. Her brother-in-law, Barney, helped her get a job at a calendar manufacturing plant. She was soon sharing a flat with a friend.
She showed a talent for drawing and impressed her nephew, Donald, with pencil sketches.
Above Lorinda at 14 years and her sister Ruth on Ruth's wedding day. This was taken on the farm next to Titlow Lake. The barn and silo are still there.
Lorinda died in April of 2020 in my home. She will always be remembered for her quick laugh and stellar home and craft skills. I will always be grateful for her legacy and memories of her family and Minnesota/German hertiage.
Some of Lorinda's Egg Collection
Lorinda in her early twenties. St, Paul, MN
Recommended
Moves to California
Lorinda remained in St. Paul until 1954 when I was five. Lorinda, her husband Leslie, Sherry(5) and Carol(4) moved to Southern California.
That is when most of my memories begin. I have a few imagines from St. Paul and they are good ones.
While I was in grade school my mother made dozens of dresses, PJ's and shorts outfits for herself, my sister, Carol and I. She was a very capable house decorator and yard keeper. We had a bright and cheery house with every thing orderly and in its place.
Even though, she moved to California, she was always in touch with her siblings and visited in the summertime. Melvin and his wife Mabel, were also in Southern California and they exchanged family visits often.
The photo at right was taken before she met Leslie Henry.
View More Creations on These Links
Visit a Photo Set and See More Decorated Eggs
Click on the blue square on the upper right to enlarge and view all the details.
The Hobby and the Lady's Group
Besides dress making Mom also lead our Blue Bird Group and watched the little boy next door when his Mother went to work at Sears three blocks from home.
In the early seventies Lorinda started paper tole and going to craft and hobby classes. Soon she was crafting and creating fanciful eggs as curios and Christmas decorations and has pursued it ever since.
In 2015 Mom does not do much egg decorating, as she is 92, and decorating decisions are too much of a challenge. She says that even to decide on a color is show stopping. Her decorating egg group is having a hard time of finding people who want to teach the craft. The art may fade for awhile, but we think it will resurge again in the future.
Lorinda and granddaughter Marcy
Many kinds of techniques have been learned to bring out the most in each new creation. She has carved with Dremel and air drills, decoupaged, paper tole, made flowers of bread dough, used glue and gouaches, painted and meticulously cut prints, and applied surfaces and layers of clear finishes.
Another fun aspect of the craft was finding just the right elements to make scenes and dioramas to suit every ones fancies and fairytale dreams.
Every holiday has been honored with an egg diorama.
For more than twenty years a steady group met every week to talk and work on their next projects. Finally as everyone neared their eighties the loyal group and its leader Gladys had to bring the journey to an end.
Lorinda has projects to finish and she brings them out as her days allow.
Lorinda and granddaughter Marcy 6/8/2008
Egg Photo Gallery
Many More Pictures to Come
Please come back soon. I have more pictures to take and more to assign to this page.
Mom and I are having fun taking the pictures. We take each one to another room where the natural light is better and even clean shelves while we are at it.
Lorinda is always appreciative of her egg viewers. If you were there in her house she will tell you the little story to almost every egg. For example: some of the little fairies and Asian figures are made of the cake figures from bakery stores. They are dressed and new faces painted on. Those are some of the treasures she has collected to furnish the inside of that special theme egg.
© 2009 Sherry Venegas
