Cindy Chao Rose Petal Earrings: Experiment With A New Material

Cindy Chao loves to experiment and plays around with materials, colours and light. Having created Ruby Rose pieces for her Four Seasons collection, she said the decision stemmed from her belief that “silver in combination with sapphire really adds a sense of mystery and mystic.” If the craftsman needs to translate Cindy’s drawings into a concrete form, he would need a handmade hammer to shape a jewel exactly as the designer wants. Moreover, when it comes to setting the gemstones in titanium, the procedure is much more complicated and time-consuming than setting gems in gold. So Cindy’s titanium masterpiece jewels would take couple of years to craft. With the Ruby Rose Petals earrings it took not much less than that: about a year-and-a-half to make (from the drawing to the final piece). “I start off work on most of my pieces with a wax sculpture which I carve myself. Once I have it, I then work with the stones and look at the colouration. For the blue sapphire Rose Petal earrings, I considered different gradients of gemstones to make the petals more alive. Also as you can see, there is no symmetry, the left and the right earring is always a bit different. I believe nothing in life or nature is exactly the same,” says Cindy. And this philosophy is reflected in all her designs.