Collections of an Only Child: Seventy Years a Bibliophile, the Library of Justin G. Schiller

The Nancy Willard Collection of Painted and Decorated Eggs

(New York, ca. 1980s-1990s). Collection of 120 wooden, glass, and/or plastic eggs, each uniquely painted, decorated, and collaged by Willard, many with moveable or sculptural parts, and attachments. Signed or inscribed by various artists, writers, and other notable visitors to Vassar College. Each measuring approximately 3 x 2 x 1 3/4 in. (76 x 51 x 44 mm). With original wooden case.

Nancy Willard (1926-2017) was an author, poet, artist, professor, and winner of the 1982 Newbery Medal for A Visit to William Blake's Inn (a runner up for a Caldecott Medal for art, for the illustrators, Alice and Martin Provensen). During her time at Vassar College, where she was a Professor of English, she began this project of creating highly decorated portrait eggs of visiting artists, authors and other influential individuals of the time. Willard had the authors and artists sign the eggs that she then designed and decorated in a uniquely personal and representative fashion, often featuring collaged, sculptural, and moveable elements.

This collection has never been publicly displayed, as it remained in Willard's personal effects as a reminder of these many individuals and of her time at Vassar. Comprising 120 eggs, it includes those created for, and signed by, such as Maurice Sendak, Julia Child, Isaac Asimov, Alice and Martin Provensen, Shel Silverstein, Eric Carle, Meryl Streep, Judy Collins, Eudora Welty, Nadine Gordimer, Jamaica Kincaid, Madeline L'Engle, Jimmy Stewart, Umberto Eco, Pete Seeger, Alice Walker, Eric Carle, Jane Smiley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Grace Paley, Ursula K. Le Guin, and dozens more. Among the eggs are those of Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Poet Laureates and others who received significant recognitions.

Willard created a series of similarly painted and decorated eggs while she was on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College, Vermont, in the 1980s and 1990s. That collection, of about three dozen eggs, is now in the Special Collections at Middlebury.

Includes: Arnold Adoff; Isaac Asimov; Jean M. Auel; Russell Banks; Leonard Baskin; Russell Banks; Claire Bloom; Bruce Brooks; Gwendolyn Brooks; Joe Bruchac; Ashley Bryan; Nancy Ekholm Burkert; David Byrne; Eric Carle; Julia Child; Amy Clampitt; Ben Cohen; Judy Collins; Mario Cuomo; Diane & Leo Dillon; Henrik Drescher; Jane Dyer; Umberto Eco; William Finn; Mem Fox; Russell Freedman; Jean Craighead George; Mordecai Gerstein; David R. Godine; Nadine Gordimer; Virginia Hamilton; Joy Harjo; William Least Heat-Moon; Edward Hoagland; Bennett Hopkins; T.R. Hummer; Trina Schart Hyman; Peter Jovanovich; Jamaica Kincaid; Galway Kinnell; Howard Koch; Tedd Kooser; Maxine Kumin; Konstantinos Lardas; Madeline L'Engle; Ursula K. Le Guin; Brad Leithauser; Denise Levertov; Mark Linn-Baker; Leo Lionni; Mickey Lolich; Phillip Lopate; Patricia MacLachlan; Gregory Maguire; James Marshall; Mary McCarthy; William Meredith; James Merrill; James Metric; Susan Minot; Sarah Moon; Robert Morse; Barry Moser (3); Catherine Murphy (2); Howard Norman; Leslie Norris; Toby Olson; Cynthia Ozick; Grace Paley; Estelle Parsons; Katherine Paterson; Gary Paulsen; Octavio Paz; Jerry Pinkney; Daniel Pinkwater; Ilse Plume; Leontyne Price; Alice & Martin Provensen (2); Alice Provenson; Alberto Rios; Harry Roseman; Lewis Rubenstein; Salman Rushdie; Cynthia Rylant; Mary Jo Salter; Ruth Sanderson; John Sayles; Pete Seeger; Maurice Sendak (2); Shel Silverstein; Louis Simpson; Jane Smiley; Isaac B. Singer; William Stafford; Diane Stanley; Maura Stanton; William Steig; Gerald Stern; Jimmy Stewart; Meryl Streep; Brian Swann; Amy Tan; James Tate; Andy Towle; Ilse-Margaret Vogel; Alice Walker; Rosemary Wells; Eudora Welty; David Wiesner; Richard Wilbur; Janet S. Wong; Don & Audrey Wood; Michael Yeats; Ed Young.