JEWELRY

JEWELRY AS DELICATE AS NATURE

The brilliance and time-consuming art of Cindy Chao

By Yuze (Cindy) Gui

Now that's a butterfly

Jewelry can draw inspiration from animals and every aspect of the natural world. But capturing the inherent grace and delicate elegance of organic forms with little more than wire and stones is a talent few possess. Cindy Chao is a Taiwanese jewelry designer and one of the most skilled and innovative in the world. Chao founded her company — Cindy Chao the Art Jewel — in 2004; became the first Taiwanese jewelry artist to attend the Christie's New York High Jewelry Auction in 2007; and is renowned for her ability to create pieces that feel organic and eerily realistic while still possessing the magnetic force of high-end jewelry design.

Chao, the daughter of a sculptor and a businesswoman, was born in Taiwan in the 1970s. She grew up in a dynamic and creative household, but it was her maternal grandfather, the outstanding architect ZiNan Xie (1907-1990), who influenced her the most. He designed hundreds of temples in Taiwan, many of which are now considered national monuments. Under his guidance, Chao learned to look at the world in three dimensions: not only in height and width, but also in depth. He made her account for each angle, the way buildings sit in relation to each other and the environment. These experiences helped her develop a keen sense of proportion and the way even an object as small as an earring can change our sense of the physical world.

Chao describes her brand simply as “very organic, very architectural, and very sculptural.” Before even beginning a piece, she spends a long time just thinking about it and waiting for some kind of inspiration to take place, which apparently can take quite a long time. In fact, the longest time she spent was ten years on a Peony Brooch. She just waited and waited until inspiration hit and she knew exactly what to do. Look at this brooch, there’s really nothing like it in the world. Composed of 2,485 rubies and 668 diamonds it required more than 10,000 hours of work. The brooch won the 2018 Outstanding Object Award from Masterpiece London, which described it as "an example of contemporary art" and praised its "excellent design." In addition, this brooch fully demonstrates the beauty, elegance and nobility of women. Look at the petals of bright red, the different sizes of the gems that create the illusion of infinite depth, and the yellow stamen in middle peaking out from the petals. And that’s not even mentioning the beautiful way it casts shadows.

The Peony Brooch

Politicians and celebrities from Europe, America, Hong Kong and Taiwan are willing to pay and wait for her to create her one-of-a-kind pieces. It is the best kind of jewelry making. Jewelry always has the potential to be intimate and personal, and Chao takes that idea to extreme lengths. We’ve looked at the Peony Brooch and we know this is not the work of a quick-change artist, but someone who thinks, and thinks, and thinks. This is and should be the path of all rare jewelry design. Unfortunately, for mass jewelry you aren’t going a ten-year gestation period.

Due to the rarity and expense of the materials, one of the most difficult aspects of jewelry design is money. Designers need lots of money to be able to make these pieces possible. That means your clients need to be extremely wealthy. And what makes wealthy people really difficult: they demand control. But Chao is adamant that she is not taking design advice from the people who pay for her pieces. They pay and she creates, often over a long period of time. She’s so good that she can demand that her customers pay upfront for the cost of the piece and then say, “I’ll see you in three years.”

Despite this long timeframe for pieces, every year Chao makes jewelry depicting one of her favorite inspirations, butterflies. The butterfly is light, elegant and noble, constantly inspiring designers around the world. But Chao’s pieces still stand alone in a crowded field of butterfly design. We need look no further than the butterfly brooch from her 2015 Black Label Master Piece series. The Ruby Butterfly is composed of a 5.16 carat (cts) cushion-shaped non-heat Burmese “pigeon’s blood” ruby, 70.04 cts diamonds, 45.90 cts rubies, and measures a total of 11.0 by 12.5 cm.

That's 6.5 million worth of art

The butterfly is now valued at $6.5 million. And with good reason. The Ruby Butterfly wings have a very small connection with the body, which is rare. Because small connections are easy to break and more difficult to create, other artists shy away from such a delicate construction when designing butterfly jewelry. Ultimately, it becomes a test and challenge for the craftsmanship of the designer. Also, the body of the Ruby Butterfly is meticulously formed with only three precious stones, further emulating the natural construction of a butterfly’s body, but making the construction of the piece extremely difficult.

In contrast, the Victorian Bohemian Garnet Butterfly Brooch highlighted as part of the Wanton Collection doesn’t come close to the sense of delicacy Chao achieves. Wanton’s butterfly design looks flat; it doesn't possess the same three dimensional design philosophy that Chao’s does. It doesn't look like it’s flying. In addition, the color of the butterfly's stone is simple. The single color can’t highlight the three-dimensional shape of the butterfly. And to top it off, the Wanton butterfly's antennae use two simple wires, which lack the vitality and vividness of the actual insect. Because Chao — thanks to her grandfather’s teachings — thinks in three dimensions, her butterfly has the visual impact of seeing the actual thing in all its 360-degree glory. In some sense, there is no lackluster “back” to be hidden against the wearer’s clothes. Consistent to Chao's philosophy, "like a miniature building and sculpture," pieces don’t have dead angles and that’s what gives her work a sense of life.

Obviously not as good

Many of the same disparities can be found in a brand as famous as Swarovski. Swarovski’s butterfly wings have some curvature to achieve a little three-dimensional effect, but the overall structure of the butterfly uses the same color and size of diamonds, so the visual effect is simple, resulting in much the same level of impact as Wanton’s butterfly. In comparison, Chao’s use of gem-encrusted, three-dimensional jewels makes her work stand out from her peers. The color of jewelry is important as well. When people wear the jewelry on an outfit, the color must be stand out from the clothing. Because the structure of the Swarovski butterfly uses only one kind of stone, this becomes difficult. The butterfly also needs some stones of different colors to distinguish the body and wings, making it look layered.

One Stone too little

In a similar vein, the modern butterfly from Elisa Jewelry Store does not come close to the sense of nobility that Chao achieves. Elisa’s butterfly design uses some stones, pearls and gold, which makes the material look rich, but the stones she chooses are similar to the color of the pearl, and it doesn't feel prominent and vivid. Chao uses two different colors and multiple sizes diamonds, white and red, and creates a 3D visual effect based on the size of the diamonds.

A lot of a lot

All of these qualities appear in Chao’s Royal Butterfly Brooch from her 2009 Master Piece series. Royal Butterfly Brooch is now in the Famous Gem Collection of the National Museum of Natural History, donated by Chao. Made up of 2,328 gems and weighing 77 carats, the brooch is set with colorful sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and tsavorite garnets. The central part of the butterfly's wings is an assembly of four large-cut diamonds stacked on a layer of diamond cuts, creating a pattern resembling the microstructure and scale of live butterfly’s wings.

She takes her time

The magic of jewelry is that it makes you stand out from the crowed. One-of-a-kind jewelry, like Chao’s pieces, are more than just a delicate look, they are more about people’s values and attitudes about life. How you choose jewelry determines how others see you. If you wear Chao’s jewelry, you will be the most dazzling star even if you aren’t one. And you will never blend into the bland architecture of the world.

©Cindy Chao and the CCA Arts Review