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Hangzhou jewelry designer gives new life to ancient pottery
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OF all the porcelain made in ancient China, only a small portion has survived into modern times. Countless pieces were cracked during production, destroyed during transportation or discarded by their owners. In the end, many examples of chinaware were smashed and buried underground, only to be discovered by later generations.
For Hangzhou-based designer Huang Yichuan, these bits of castoff porcelain are anything but detritus. They are buried gems waiting to be appreciated again.
Under Huang’s skilled hands, exhumed ceramic shards — some of which were hidden underground for hundreds of years — are reworked into earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings.
“Through these porcelain pieces I see the wisdom and the lifestyle of ancient people,” she says. “A designer should be capable of extending the old wisdom and beauty into the present day.”
Huang is meticulous with her designs and her choice of shards. To make an angel’s pendant, for instance, she will search for a ceramic piece with a dragon-scale or phoenix-tail motif. The artist may also spend hours searching for matching flower-print shards for a single necklace. Once the perfect shard is found, it is cut and polished into a suitable size and shape, and then set into a larger piece of jewelry.
“On average, I spend two days looking for the ‘right’ piece that suits my design,” she says.
Huang’s studio on the southside of Hangzhou is packed with thousands of pieces of ceramic shards, most of them purchased from Beijing. The majority of these shards date from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Huang says she avoids modern pottery, since, in her opinion, the chemical composition of clays used today result in less attractive colors.
Huang studied furniture design in college. She decided to pursue jewelry-making as a career after using some of her father’s old pottery shards for necklaces. The praise she received from her friends and design peers spurred her on. She later studied metalworking in order to create more sophisticated pieces.
“I save the most interesting part of a broken piece, and reuse it,” she says. “I discover the essence of the art, and help it accompany modern people’s lives.”
Indeed, as the designer explains, her pieces are meant to be worn with modern casual clothes. “T-shirts and jeans are the best match,” the designer says.
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