Eggs depicting Joseph Grimaldi and Emmett Kelly are among the hundreds of painted clown portraits in the Clown Egg Register. Photograph by Betsy Golden Kellem.
FROM A RECENT ISSUE OF BANDWAGON
Why are clowns’ faces painted on eggs? Discover the extraordinary collection preserving generations of circus personalities, one painted face at a time.
The Clown Egg Register
By Betsy Golden Kellem
Volume 68 • Number 4 • 2024 • Pages 32–36
It is common knowledge in the clowning community that a working clown’s makeup scheme is his or her own. To wear the same dress to the dance as another girl, so to speak, would be professionally inappropriate, not to mention extremely rude. In the 1940s in England, a hobbyist and circus fan named Stan Bult decided a tangible record was just the thing to keep track of clowns’ individual personas.
Bult had grown up next door to a circus family (he recalled feeding their backyard emus) and turned his enthusiasm into a club and trade group called the International Circus Clowns Club. Today known as Clowns International, the organization continues in many of its original purposes: providing community, celebrating clowning history, and sharing knowledge. But the group is probably most well-known for Bult’s most curious pursuit: preserving clowns’ makeup schemes on painted eggs.
The complete article is available to members of the Circus Historical Society through the members-only Backyard.