I was visiting Mum and Dad one Christmas around 1990 when the lathe was in Dad's workshop, and suggested making egg cups. I used one of Mum's sherry glasses as a model. Dad kept popping up from under the lathe bench with another little offcut in his hand, and in the end I made quite a number, each one from a different type of wood.

The larger cups are for a goose egg. A friend of Mum and Dad keeps geese, and occasionally drops some eggs round to them. They are about the same as three large hens' eggs. As a sort of thank you joke gift I made him some goose egg cups from a length of Spanish olive 3x3 (75 mm x 75 mm) I had inherited with the lathe in 2017. They were fun to make, and I first made a dummy goose egg so that I could test for fit when hollowing out (same technique as an end grain bowl or a small lidded box).

elder, apple, elm

hawthorne, damson, box

yew, laburnum, olive

beech, mahogany

teak, Honduran walnut, kauri/agathis