Designs In Shell Gallery in downtown San Diego's Balboa Park has operated from Studio 14 at the Village Arts Center since 1999, following a decade of eggshell-art exhibitions that began at juried craft shows in 1990. The gallery shares the 37-studio Spanish Village complex with guilds covering glass, pottery, sculpture, and enamel — including Art Glass Guild — making it one of the few eggshell-specific studios within a multi-medium working artist colony near the San Diego Zoo. Display cases hold museum-quality carved and embellished eggshell designs spanning Old World filigree techniques to contemporary mixed-media interpretations, each piece requiring precision cutting tools, miniature hinges, and fine-gauge wire armatures. Adjacent studio artists contributing fiber-felting, beadwork, and polymer clay expand the gallery's range beyond egg art into complementary decorative-craft mediums, a curatorial breadth paralleled by fellow Spanish Village residents like San Diego Sculptors Guild across the courtyard. The most technically demanding commissions involve multi-opening hinged ostrich-egg shadow boxes with interior diorama scenes, requiring structural reinforcement of the calcium-carbonate shell before any decorative work begins.