Clowns International, whose headquarters are at Wookey Hole in Somerset, England, claims to be the oldest clown society in the world. Whether or not this is true, Clowns International can cer­tainly claim the most unusual approach to copy­righting a clown’s image. Each new member can register their indi­vidual make-up with the society, whereupon (according to Wikipedia) an egg­shell is dec­orated as a mini­ature version of the clown’s head and added to the ‘Egg Gallery’.

Artist Luke Stephenson was given the oppor­tunity to pho­to­graph a rep­res­ent­ative selection from the famous Egg Gallery (properly known as The Clown Egg Register), including the eggs belonging to such well-known names as Joseph Grimaldi, the Fratellinis, and Pimpo The Clown.

Okay, so ‘Pimpo’ mightn’t exactly be “well-known”, but neither am I making him up. Would I yolk about some­thing as serious as clowning?