At a recent top spinning festival, I learned an old juggling skill from juggler Marcus Perry. It features the use of an egg and a large wooden dish. The egg I learned with was a large plastic Easter egg, but it can also be done with wooden egg, hard boiled egg, or a top that is fairly egg-shaped. The skill was easy enough to learn that I actually performed it in a show the day after trying it for the first time. The skill is traditionally done with a flat tray, but is much easier with a concave dish. With either version, you want the tray or dish to not be overly smooth. It requires some friction that you can’t achieve with smooth china.
The earliest known reference to egg spinning as a performance trick is from an advertisement from 1869 for the Royal Tycoon Japanese Performers.
Japanese juggler Gintaro (1875 – 1952) presented the traditional trick of spinning a “blown egg” on a tray, as you can see below. A “blown egg” is an egg that has had the insides removed by making small holes at the top and bottom and blowing into one hole so that the contents come out the other side.
Gintaro
This trick can also be done using a hard boiled egg on a tray. Below are instructions on performing the trick from The Modern Magicians Hand Book, written by William Hilliar in 1902.
Below are instructions for this trick by Joe Marsh.
Here is Olivier Caignart performing the skill.
Below is a video of me demonstrating the skill with a large wooden dish. I first start with the egg not moving and get it to spin on its fat end. Sometimes it will spin on the narrow end starting this way, but it is rare. Unfortunately, if you want to get the fastest spin and do tricks, it’s best to spin the egg on the narrow end, so you will see that I then restart the egg by spinning it on the narrow end and continue from there, demonstrating a few tricks.
If you want to learn this skill, find a wooden dish like you see in the video (available from IKEA) and a plastic or wooden egg. It’s not too tough to learn. If you want to use a top, you can use the King Tut top found here.
Olivier Caignart also does a trick involving spinning a section of a hard boiled egg around the rim of a plate, as you can see below.
Here are some other videos showing versions of this skill.
If you know of more history regarding this trick, please contact me.
David Cain
David Cain is a professional juggler, juggling historian, and the owner of the world's only juggling museum, the Museum of Juggling History. He is a Guinness world record holder and 16 time IJA gold medalist. In addition to his juggling pursuits, David is a successful composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and singer as well as the author of twenty-six books. He and his children live in Middletown, OH (USA).