{"product_id":"coffee-table-book-of-eggs-paperback","title":"Coffee Table Book of: Eggs (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003eCoffee Table Book of: Eggs is a large-format coffee table book about eggs, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Most are birds' eggs, set as still lifes on a plain ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt begins with shape: a nearly round owl's egg, the long, narrow egg of a swift, the plain oval of a goose egg, pear-shaped lapwing eggs fitted points together in a nest of dry grass, and a row of eggs running from almost round to long and sharply pointed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen colour, and the marks laid over it: eggs graded from white through blue and olive to red-brown, clear blue-green robin's eggs, a sky-blue thrush egg with a few black spots, guillemot eggs in many colours and markings, a yellowhammer's egg scribbled with fine dark lines, an osprey's boldly blotched with red-brown, and two marbled nightjar eggs lying on dry leaves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the great and the small: an ostrich egg and the huge, weathered egg of the extinct elephant bird, each with an ordinary hen's egg beside it, two tiny hummingbird eggs in a cup of plant down and lichen, and the eggs of the ostrich, emu, cassowary and rhea side by side. Then nests: a cuckoo's egg in a reed warbler's nest, eider eggs in a deep bed of down, penguin eggs on a nest of small stones, a flamingo's egg on top of a tall cone of dried mud, and a wood pigeon's flimsy platform of twigs.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the shore and the farmyard: a gannet's egg on a mound of dried seaweed, tern eggs among pale shingle, a swan's clutch in a wide mound of reeds, a row of hen's eggs from white and cream through brown and chocolate to pale blue and olive green, and duck eggs shading from charcoal black to off-white.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToward the end it goes beyond the birds: sea turtle eggs heaped in pale sand, alligator eggs in a mound of rotting leaves, two gecko eggs stuck to a piece of bark, the soft eggs of a platypus, and a fossil clutch of dinosaur eggs set in a ring in reddish rock.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShort notes run through the book. They are about the eggs and the animals that lay them rather than about the pictures: where the word oval comes from, which living bird lays the largest egg, why a blue hen's egg is blue right through its shell, and what the empty egg cases of skates are called when they wash up on beaches.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrinted in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cedar Pine Editions","offers":[{"title":"Perfect Bound","offer_id":68148180156720,"sku":"9671456004082","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0262\/2357\/5085\/files\/9671456004082.jpg?v=1792626818","url":"https:\/\/www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk\/products\/coffee-table-book-of-eggs-paperback","provider":"The Great British Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}