Unscrambled eye
Singular collection of Easter egg figurines on display to aid Schoharie library
The Little Red School House is bursting with life. Look at the students on their way to school — some cheerful, some crabby. See the parents. The teacher ringing the bell. The basket of apples. The kid hauling wood to a pot-bellied stove, sticking her tongue out at her adult taskmaster as if to say: YOU’RE MAKING ME CARRY FIREWOOD.
All of them are tiny, colorful and fastidiously crafted. And all of them are eggheads. Literally.
“Here’s a kid crying. And then there’s another kid happily carrying her little book bag. And another one who’s crying. Here’s the little outhouse,” says Joe Heyman, leaning over and pointing inside the wee structure. “And then you look carefully: A Montgomery Ward catalogue is the toilet paper.”
Welcome to the Land of Eggs — or, more officially, the Schoharie Easter Egg Museum, a massive collection inside a modest yellow building that houses thousands of eggs in dozens of brightly crafted settings. Open over the next three weekends — for the first time in five years — the collection is the lifelong passion and magnum opus of the late Mildred Vrooman, a Schoharie librarian and folk artist who died in late 2012 at the age of 103.
“I appreciate what she’s done,” says Heyman, who owns the collection with his wife, Berna. “The personalities she’s put into it. The work, the talent and the imagination.”
Opening the house for a sneak peek on a chilly Monday, the couple toured the tables crowded with Vrooman’s diminutive creations. In all, the collection features more than 3,000 decorated eggs — previously estimated at 5,000, but Joe actually counted them — arranged in 33 elaborate scenarios, some from history, some from storybooks, some from the Bible.
There’s a circus scene. An Easter wedding, complete with choir. The old woman who lived in a shoe — and
judging from the way she’s spanking a redheaded boy, she’s pretty darned angry. The First Thanksgiving. The Last Supper, with Judas — another redhead — sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a very chilllooking Jesus. On the other side of Judas is an apostle bearing a strong resemblance to John Lennon.
And over there, egg-centric busts of U.S. presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. Like all the other characters peopling the museum, they’re an eccentric bunch, their faces distinct and filled with expression. Look at the variations in coifs and facial hair — Jackson’s puffy pompadour, Lincoln’s fulsome beard.
“You come in here, and you see all of these, and it’s almost overwhelming to see so many diversified things,” Berna says. “And the beauty of it is concentrating on one small area and noticing the detail of the differences in the faces, and all the different kinds of materials that she used . ... She used fur. Real fur. She used canvas. She used —” “Sequins,” Joe says.
“Lace,” Berna continues. “She used velvet. She made hair. She started out with just yarn, and then she got more sophisticated in later years, and she basically sculpted it. She started out with hands that were pipe cleaners, and then she bought hands” — little plastic doll parts.
The first time he laid eyes on the collection, Joe says, “I looked at this and said, ‘Oh my gosh, so much stuff,’” he recalled. “And then you start looking at any one thing . ... how she did the hat, how she did the little collars. Then you go to the next one and you see the similarities, the differences, the detail that she put in. And it’s just like, holy mackerel! This woman was obsessed with eggs!”
Vrooman was working as a Schoharie librarian when, in 1951, children’s artist-illustrator Katherine Milhous won a Caldecott Medal for “The Egg Tree.” Vrooman, inspired, started creating her own egg trees. Then she started creating scenarios, aided by her friend Elizabeth Warner.
And they kept at it. And at it. And at it. The resulting collection bounced from one location to another, including the Old Stone Fort Museum — represented in one of her eggy scenarios, using the exact same stone — and the Schoharie Colonial Heritage Association. Then in 2001, Joe says, “Miss Mildred Vrooman bought the house next to her. Had it knocked down. And built this building to house the museum.”
The Heymans — she a retired dean of libraries at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., he a photographer and retired NASA scientist — acquired the 2,400-foot structure when they purchased the neighboring house and property in 2013. Though they knew of the egg collection, they didn’t realize, at first, that the oviform artworks were included in the sale. “We bought a house,” Berna says. “And got a museum.”
A year later, the Heymans opened the collection as a fundraiser for the Schoharie Free Library. Back then they were raising money to help with recovery from Tropical Storm Irene. This time, they’re trying to give back to the community in
the wake of the October limo crash that left 20 people dead, deeply affecting those who live in the tightly knit area.
The hoped-for result, aside from money for the library: some measure of healing. “What it really provides is a way for the community to get together and get behind something that is positive, and fun, and supports our community, supports our local businesses, supports our restaurants and other organizations,” says Laura Rosenthal, a member of the library board and the Heymans’ daughter.
Vrooman’s handiwork includes chicken eggs, turkey eggs, goose eggs, ostrich eggs. There are rabbits made of Easter eggs painting their own Easter eggs (meta!). There are proud ladies in smashing gowns and a “Wizard Oz” scene featuring a Tin Man, his tin hat a repurposed screw-on cap. The artist used Avon containers. Seed pods. Paper towel rolls. In a “Dutch Life” scene, little wooden clogs carved from dowels.
“She probably went to all of her friends and said, ‘Never throw anything out. Give it to me,” Joe says.
In an effort to document her work, the Heymans have published a thick hardcover featuring Joe’s many photographs of the egg collection — “so that history knows what this woman did and it’s not just lost,” he says. A portion of the proceeds will go to the library.
The Heymans aren’t sure what the future holds for their egg repository. No, they say, they have no plans to open it permanently. Yes, they would like to secure its future — possibly in some nearby museum, ideally with the help of a private benefactor who would keep it in Schoharie and accessible to the public.
“You never know if the next people that own this property would have the recognition that this is something that’s important and needs to be protected,” Joe says. “So we’d like to see it happen during our tutelage.”
But for now, at least, the Land of the Eggs lives on. Six and a half years after Vrooman’s death, her richly imagined menageries remain frozen in time. Its occupants never change. The Heymans never move them. Or do they?
“No,” Joe says.
Berna, laughing, points to herself. “I do,” she whispers conspiratorially from behind her husband’s shoulder. “Just a little bit.”