Set of Three French Glass Egg Coddlers with Metal Handles

"Another single-use object that I love!" — Patricia exclaims of these three egg coddlers, small glass vessels that once appeared on the breakfast table at Chanteduc almost daily, when eggs were a morning ritual for Patricia and Walter.

The design is attributed to Wilhelm Wagenfeld, the German Bauhaus-trained designer who created them in 1933 while working with Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen. Wagenfeld applied Bauhaus principles to everyday domestic objects — the conviction that good design should be beautiful, affordable and genuinely useful. These coddlers are a precise expression of that philosophy: clear borosilicate glass, small and rounded, raised on four neat square feet, each fitted with a flat ribbed glass lid held in place by a gently undulating metal wire handle. The form is modest and considered, the glass water-clear, the metal handle a graceful flourish that makes the whole thing easy to lift from a pan of simmering water.

Patricia explains that you crack an egg into the coddler, set the lid on top, and lower it into hot water to cook gently — the result a perfectly set egg, contained and tender. For anyone who loves a considered breakfast or a beautifully laid table, these three coddlers would sit as happily on a kitchen shelf as in active use: a small, intelligent piece of design history that still does exactly what it was made to do.