Designers rediscover the decorative potential of eggshells

Mr. Mark de la Vega has been devouring eggs by the dozen — 300 dozen in the past six months. But not as omelets.

- Yelena Moroz Alpert

UNITED STATES —

Mr. de la Vega, a designer in Brooklyn, produces panels and furnishings ornamented with eggshell lacquer.

The finish originated with East Asian artisans, who embedded shell fragments from duck or chicken eggs into the surfaces of decorative art pieces as a substitute for white pigment.

In the early 20th century, Switzerland-born Art Deco craftsman Jean Dunand bartered his metalworking skills to learn the technique, also known as coquille d'oeuf, from a Japanese expert visiting Paris. According to art historian Felix Marcilhac, Dunand was the first to use tweezers to apply crushed shells to produce a "white craquelure effect."

"When you see it in person, it is just candy," said Mr. John Gachot, an interior designer who worked on the former West Village home of fashion designer Marc Jacobs. He was referring to Jacobs' circa-1925 Dunand side table, which sold at Sotheby's in 2019 for US$131,250 (S$170,000).

Almost exactly a century after the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts — the show that gave Art Deco its name — opened in Paris, Dunand's legacy continues.

In January, British company de Gournay unveiled Dunand, a gilded silk wallpaper whose angular, speckled pattern and brassy sheen allude to his metalwork and eggshells.

With glitzy, geometry-loving Art Deco re-emerging in contemporary home furnishings, the technique is proliferating.