PROMOTION A Different THE LATEST MASTERPIECES FROM CINDY CHAO THE ART JEWEL EXUDE A FAMILIAR SENSE OF DECORATIVE STYLE YET TAKE THE ICONIC TAIWANESE ARTIST IN NEW DIRECTIONS Taiwanese jewellery artist Cindy Chao has cemented her position as one of the world’s leading artist jewellers, revealing her latest masterpieces this summer in two of Europe’s crucibles of decorative arts. She returned to the appropriately named London Masterpiece exhibition to show alongside Old Master paintings and contemporary sculpture, where she has won several awards, and to Haute Couture week in Paris, where last year she became the first Asian jewellery artist to become a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et Lettres. 2022 BLACK LABEL MASTERPIECE VI ROSÉ RIBBON BROOCH She also worked with Dutch artist and architect Tom Postma and his team to create a multi- media “mobile museum” setting for her display. Cindy Chao’s latest highlights take her in new directions. Her favourite ribbon motif, reminiscent of the art of couture, is interpreted in glorious colour for the 2022 Black Label Masterpiece VI, the Rosé Ribbon Brooch. This gives a predominantly purplish-pink impression, yet is polychromatic and complex, with ten varieties of gemstone set into a textured framework of super-light titanium, precisely anodised to reflect the colour gradients of the stones. 2022 BLACK LABEL MASTERPIECE II PICASSO’S DREAM EARRINGS This contemporary material contrasts with the age-old lost wax technique that shapes the piece, in which pink, purple and blue sapphires, rubies, purple garnets and rhodolites appear to float on a bed of snow-set white and yellow diamonds in a feat of craftsmanship and design.
Twist Masterpiece X, the Morning Dew Earrings, is equally highly crafted. Inspired by the organic curves of ivy leaves and their clinging stems, the asymmetric shapes are created in titanium, melted to 1,668 degrees centigrade and given solid form by the lost wax technique, then anodised to a blue-green colour, which sets off the vivid shade of the Colombian emeralds that represent the leaves. The earrings’ centrepieces are cushioncut emeralds (16.20 and 14.57 carats), each surrounded by a relief of 14 more emeralds, the stems with white diamonds and outlined with small greyish-blue and greyish-green sapphires and colourchange garnets. 2022 BLACK LABEL MASTERPIECE X MORNING DEW EARRINGS Three-dimensionality is the guiding principle behind Masterpiece II, the Picasso’s Dream Earrings, inspired by the curvaceous eroticism of the artist’s masterwork Le Rêve interpreted as fanciful seedpods or fruit. Rare, emeraldcut, fancy dark brown-yellow diamonds (16.70 and 16.20 carats) at their hearts are given shimmering movement by hidden joints. Each pod’s three lobes are pavéd outside and in with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, alexandrites and colourchange garnets, varying the overall hue from blue to green as the light changes, while yellow diamonds outline the pieces as if captured in sunlight. The titanium is anodised from blue to green, yellow and brown, synchronised with the stones and creating earrings equally masterful when viewed from front or back. As with all Chao’s work, nothing but perfection suffices. right: Cindy Chao alongside Tom Postma. below: CINDY CHAO mobile museum set up at Masterpiece London
