Why eggshell mosaics?

The simple version of these are kid craft - little pieces of Easter egg shell glued onto construction paper. Which is great - the kids enjoy it, learn some new art skills and produce some cool little pictures in the process.

Given a lot of time and patience the result can be much more detailed - scenes represented simply in sharply defined blocks of color, mottled with subtle variations. The results are often more like terrazzo than mosaic.

My son, Henry and the terrazzo Pluto at the Dallas Science Museum.

I'm making a few science-themed pieces and I think the look will be right for it.

There aren't many books on the subject, at least none I've found. There are pages here and there in more general craft and mosaic books, and there is one book in print, Eggshell Mosaics by Gail Dziuba. She doesn't work in exactly the style I will be, but the book did send me in the right direction for materials and technique.

Since the method I'm using was more common in the 1950's - 70's, I've been looking through sources from those decades. There's a little in books, but so far some of the best information has come from newspapers. Some of the materials and methods vary a lot, so I'll be doing some experimenting before committing anything to a final project, posting the results here.

One thing I have found out already - eggshell mosaics have been around a lot longer than I thought.