Antique Chromolithograph English Die Cut Easter Chick Egg Scrap

Please note that this is real, full size antique scrap, not a miniature.

20 years ago my grandfather gave me these exquisite chromolithograph die cut scrap pictures he'd kept in his cellar since the 1920's and 1930's.

My grandfather was a candy maker and bought these embossed scrap pictures to use inside panorama Easter eggs. He gave me the ones he still had left. He told me that after the war, these pictures became impossible to find because all of the factories had been bombed during WW II.

If you've never seen a panorama Easter Egg, it was an egg, made of sugar or chocolate that was hollow. A round hole was left in one end and covered with plastic or glass - if you looked inside the egg, you saw a beautiful scene that looked 3-D filled with pictures of flowers and children playing and all sorts of things!

The scrap pictures themselves are absolutely exquisite. This sheet is of Easter chicks and Easter eggs!

The detail in them is amazing. In the top row there's an adorable fat little chick standing in beautiful blue flowers who just came out of a pink egg with yellow polka dots. Next to him, there's a chick who just came out of a big blue striped Easter egg standing in the middle of purple and yellow flowers.

The next row has a chick peeking into a dark blue egg trimmed with lace and orange stars. He's standing in a woven basket decorated with a lavender bow and yellow flowers. Next to him are two chicks - one fawn colored and one bright yellow with a bow around his neck. They're both looking at a bright orange egg with purple stars, surrounded by tiny blue flowers. The next row has three chicks around a half of a pink egg filled with purple flowers. The last picture is of two bright yellow chicks all tangled up in pink ribbon tied around a blue egg with darker blue flowers on it.

I believe Victorian women and children used to put these into their scrap albums. These are pretty enough to be framed if you're not an ephemera collector!

There are 12 pictures in all - doubles of each of the three rows I described above.

The sheet itself measures 6 1/8" wide and 9 1/2" high. Each individual piece is about 1 1/2" high by 3" wide. The sheet is also marked with the initials MLP printed in black inside an oval and has a number on it - #919 and says: "Made in England".