Egg carving–skating on thin ice

2. Setting calibration line: Place the egg on the "calibration line device", draw the bisector and parallel line on the eggshell based on the design draft and then draw the detailed pattern according to the fixed position.

3. Carving: Use different tools. Egg carving tools are very simple mainly including the burin and shovel knife. Burin consists of oblique burin used for carving lines or details, small flat blade mainly used for carving details and corners, and large flat blade used for large size and rough carving; and shovel knife is used to level subface. Flexible combination of tools may be applied in actual use. Other tools include pencil, eraser, knife, whetstone, nicking tool, etc.

Carving forms: Eggshell carving boasts a great variety of forms and rich contents. You can carve characters, different flowers, various animals, and even figures on the shell if you are skilled enough. The carving techniques include positive carving, negative carving, line carving, etc.

4. Re-cleaning: In the cutting and carving process, stains are often produced on the eggshell surface, so re-cleaning is needed to cleanse the inner membrane of eggshell with steel brush.

5. Decoration: The processing method from inside to outside is adopted. The internal decoration should be performed first to avoid cracking during the complicated decoration process. The external decoration is subject to the pattern design to fix all kinds of gold thread, diamond, claw chain, beads, metal accessories, music bells, etc. according to the planned procedures. 6. As the shell itself is fragile which increases the production difficulties and reduces the success rate, each finished egg carving product is an exquisite artwork.