Where it comes from
English lists had oval bowls; the egg as we now mean it is a Danish idea. From the 1950s Sixten Ivarsson and the Copenhagen makers stretched the apple into a taller oval, slimmed the waist, and often bent the shank. The name is the outline. It travelled with the Danish school to Japan and to every artisan who works in that line — including a bench in Yerevan that already reads Danish tightness on a billiard.
The specification
Bowl: oval, taller than an apple, narrower at the waist than a brandy. Shank: often bent. Finish on 444/24: smooth, high gloss, grain left to speak. One plate in the cabinet. No millimetres on that card. The difference from a brandy is the waist and the height; the difference from an apple is that the bowl is no longer a sphere.
When to choose it
If you want more height and a quieter waist than 491/26’s brandy, look at the egg. If you want the round palm of 423/24, stay with the apple. 444/24 is the piece that shows Levon’s egg — one pipe, not a model run next year.