To make an eggshell into a work of art, rather than another piece of refuse to throw away, requires a lot of patience and nerves of steel.

Just ask Andranik, a young man who got introduced to the technique over the internet, and decided to give it a go.

“I’ve always been interested in the unfamiliar. Take the egg art for example. I wanted to understand how they did it,” says Andranik who started to experiment on eggshells four months ago.

He explained that it all starts by drawing a design on a raw egg. Then, using a needle, the contents inside are carefully drawn out. The empty shell is washed and put aside to “rest” for one day, after which it’s ready for sculpting.

Andranik says he spends from six to ten hours on each eggshell, depending on the difficulty of the pattern.

Precision jeweller’s tools are used to sculpt the fragile shell. The young artist says he’s only lost one egg to breakage. It goes without saying that steady hands are an asset.

Surprisingly, Andranik says he never sells the finished shells and prefers to give them away as gifts.

“The whole commercial aspect turns me off. I derive greater pleasure giving my work away as presents. The designs I come up with are based on the personality of the person who’ll get the egg as a gift,” he says.

When we visited, Andranik was etching out Mt Ararat on an egg. He’ll continue with an Armenian motif by carving grapevines on the next eggshell.

He confesses that egg carving is a mere hobby and that there are no long-term prospects of turning it into a commercial venture.

Taking a more realistic track, Andranik plans to travel to Saint Petersburg in September to learn to become a dental technician.