egg is a photographic book that brings together 160 “fake eggs” collected by Keiichi Sumi over a span of 22 years from around the world. Each egg is a unique imitation — toys, health goods, ornaments, food samples, and more — produced between the late 19th and early 21st centuries.

The book’s design takes the fragility of the egg as its motif: from the texture of the cover paper and the typography to the way the title “egg” is broken apart and distributed across the cover, every element embodies the concept of the egg.

In both content and form, this book is an ode to eggs. Created as part of the FRAGILE BOOKS project, it seeks to reexamine what a book can be, and to rediscover its potential as a vessel of imagination. 

The eggs in this book are fakes — they can neither break nor hatch.
In a sense, they remain in a state of becoming, celebrating eternal possibility. This book is dedicated to everyone who once was an egg of something, and to everyone who is now on the verge of becoming something.

Profile:
Keiichi Sumi

He was born in 1964 in Hakodate, Hokkaido. At the age of 18, he moved to Tokyo alone to study at the Architecture department of Waseda University. After leaving the architectural design  rm after 3 years, he spent ten years cleaning windows of buildings while traveling around Europe and the Middle East. In 2002, he opened his own interior design shop “push me pull you” in Ikejiri Ohashi (Tokyo), which no longer exists. He also designed interior spaces for the fashion brand “vêtements,” the art gallery “LA GALERIE DES NAKAMURA,” the select shop “Haberdashery,” the photo studio “Lion Building” and “Origata Design Institute.” In 2004, he opened “petit cul” in Waseda with his partner Kimiko Matsuzawa.