the egg

last weekend i promised you a post about my connection to danish scientist, mathematician, inventor, author and poet piet hein, so here goes.

i had stumbled upon him a few weeks ago working through a confusing maze of wikipedia pages when i was doing some reading on l-systems, or lindenmayer systems, a formal grammar used to model the growth of plants.

there i found an item that looked incredibly familiar to me. it was a small golden egg, not quite 2 inches long, made of solid brass, that used to sit on my grandfather’s desk next to his phone, note pad, fountain pen and paper knife for as long as i could think. compared to a hen’s egg it was a little flattened at the ends and sides so you could put it on end and it wouldn’t topple over even if you gave it a gentle nudge. i remember i used to play with this egg for hours and hours while the grown-ups talked about boring stuff in the adjoining living room, turning it between my fingers, polishing it with my sleeve, letting it roll from one hand to the other marveling at its weight and solidity. i would have given anything for that egg. i remember wondering about the material too, thinking it must be incredibly precious, probably made from gold, because i had heard that gold was very heavy. i’m pretty sure i never asked my grandfather for that egg, because a) i was sure it was worth a million dollars, b) it must have been special to my grandfather if it was sitting next to his stuff on his desk and c) i was a very shy and modest child.

my grandfather died when i was 19, i never heard what happened to the egg, and i probably never investigated, i was just out of school at that time and had left my parents’ house. i know my cousin had asked for my grandfather’s desk so when my thoughts eventually returned to that egg years later i assumed he took all the things that went with the desk too.

when my mother died ten years after her father and i was assigned to clear out her desk, i found a little heavy brown suede pouch in her top desk drawer. i opened it, and out fell the egg. i sat there for long minutes, staring at it. i closed my fist around it, feeling it warm slowly in my hand. it was dull, and i polished it a little, wandering through the rooms of my grandfather’s flat in my mind. i had found a treasure.

so, now on my quest for the lindenmayer systems i discovered that this neat little thing was made by piet hein, who applied the form of the superellipse — a hybrid form between an ellipse and a rectangle or square — in urban planning, architecture, furniture design and finally his “super-egg”. ten years after my surprising rediscovery and over thirty years after my first fascination with it, i have learned something about the origin of my “golden” egg. it’s a super-egg.

i was awed by what a multitalent piet hein was. i found out he designed my favourite table as well, together with bruno mathsson and arne jacobsen, which i had only seen credited to the latter until now. and he wrote witty little poems he called “grooks”, some of which remind me of james thurber and shel silverstein, as well as some “serious” poetry. i have no idea why his name didn’t cross my path before. it sure should have, but i guess i wasn’t looking.

~ by bine on November 21, 2007.