Ring by Wallace Chan

What does it mean when an artisan insists he can do nature one better? It means that he should not only have the guts to fulfill such a promise, but also do so with equal mastery. While many have proffered such puffery, Wallace Chan seems to have lived up to it. Even the fashion folk are fanning the fire: W will include an exclusive spread about Chan in their November issue. Is he the next Joel Arthur Rosenthal, also known as JAR? Perhaps… and perhaps he will raise the bar even higher. On the tablet of jewelry design, there is plenty of white space for those talented enough to leave their mark.

Necklace by Wallace Chan

Chan’s approach to jewelry design began as a meditative process. After retreating from the world of sculpture, a talent he honed from the age of thirteen when he apprenticed with a local artist, he emerged like one of his butterflies, glorious, fully-realized and alighting on the jeweler’s bench ready to fulfill his destiny. As a sculptor, he’d already taught himself the cameo and intaglio techniques of carving gemstones, and later, gem-cutting. His now famous Wallace-cut won the Hong Kong Jewelry Design Award in 1987.

However, Chan’s aesthetic isn’t easily definable. He wears nothing by way of ornament on his body, not even a watch. He has six television sets mounted on the wall of his home, all turned on and at one point in his life, tuned to fashion shows almost every night. He will tell you that his unique approach results from the silent confines of Buddhist meditation. Yet his list of those whose jewelry he admires resides in the collective consciousness as larger than life: JAR, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Andre Derain, and Jean Arp. They’ve earned his respect for, “…art objects that were popular for their design rather than the (intrinsic) value of the works themselves.” This is probably a good time to mention that Chan works in titanium — a noble metal as unforgiving to imperfection as it is wondrous in texture, weight, and coloration.

Brooches by Wallace Chan

What are we to make of this? Is his artistic vision extracted from the complex network of outlets the world has fashioned from the “information highway?” Or is he simply a savvy negotiator and communicator of his professional platform? Both, I suspect, but nevertheless talented in a way that only skill and originality make hype irrelevant.

Visit www.wallace-chan.com for more information.