My Dad Made the Biggest Jewelled Egg in the World. The Obsession Would Destroy his Marriage, Family and Fortune

“Dad first told me of his plan to build the world’s largest jewelled egg while perched in the cab of a small digger,” writes Serena Kutchinsky in this edited extract from Kutchinsky’s Egg: A Family Story of Love, Loss & Obsession. But her dad’s obsession with this egg cost the family everything. This is the strange, fascinating tale of what it takes to build—and sell—a giant gold egg. Sometimes you can dream too big.

But after the egg, life was never the same. It came to bear responsibility for the loss of our century-old business, the implosion of my parents’ marriage and Dad’s untimely death. After the family firm was sold, the egg was seized by creditors and locked away. It vanished but its shadow lingered. Mum raged against it as if it were human. A Maleficent-like villain that stole her livelihood and husband, and robbed her children of a father. I was meant to hate it, too. But I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t hate Dad when he left. Instead, the idea that this shrine to his eccentric, audacious ambition was out there somewhere gnawed away at me.