some sort of frothy drink containing egg whites

Let's talk Faberge. In nurses opinion Faberge eggs are the most beautifully useless, delightfully absurd treasures around. The Tsars knew how to live, boy oh boy. This Russian jeweler fellow Peter Carl Faberge (who never traveled with any luggage) started coming up with them in the 1880s after being named the official goldsmith to the imperial crown by Alexander the Third. Go look up Alexander the Third too, interesting chap.

So the eggs: they were a product of the Tsarist inclination towards objets de luxe which means useless fancy items. The Russians do love their eggs. Psanky, etc. Faberge made 50 large ones for the tsars that are simply spectacular, but the thousands of smaller ones were also superb. A feature of all the eggs is that they open on a hinge to reveal 'surprises' inside, such as an enamelled object or piece of jewelry, or both. some contain tiny portraits. Some are clocks. Most are jewel encrusted and exhibit superb enamelling techniques.


Nurse has a reproduction of the imperial rosebud egg. It is fun to play a game of bowls using the egg as the ball and miniature liquor bottles as bowling pins. One supposes a sort of billiards could be played with them as well, perhaps with ivory walking sticks as pool cues. Monocles: mandatory