Simply Abu Dhabi XX

1 2 3 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I to treat jewellery as a miniature piece of architecture or sculpture. My mother collected jewellery and every time I looked at it I would wonder how such tiny pieces could contain so much power. Yet I found most of them very traditional and not beautiful from my perspective, so it was kind of a challenge when I first started. It was my mum who suggested that I should be a jewellery designer.” She didn’t dilly dally when it came to making a name for herself, even surprising herself with her rapid rise to fame. “When I finished my first collection, the Four Seasons, in 2007, I decided to bring it to New York. When attending gemmology school there, I would pass by Christie’s at the Rockefeller Centre everyday and would say to myself that if I had a piece auctioned at Christie’s before I died my dream would be fulfilled.” Chao’s dream came to fruition in 2007, just three years after starting her brand, when she became the first Taiwanese jewellery artist to take part in a Christie’s New York fine jewellery auction. Now in 2015 we see Chao’s latest incredible range of work – the Cindy Chao The Art Jewel 2015 Rose Collection. The inspiration for this collection, which places the divine beauty of the rose at its heart, came on a trip to Italy some years earlier. Chao visited the artistic city of Florence and saw the statue of Michelangelo’s David at the Giardino delle rose. Drinking in the unforgettable vista over the city of art obviously left a mark on Chao. And the symbol she took away was from the Giardino delle rose; walking down the hill she admired the 350 varieties of roses, many over 200 years old, bursting into blossom. With a fragrant and intoxicating range of white, red, peach, canary and lavender roses, the spell was cast and the Rose collection is her astounding expression of this most famous of flowers. With brooches, rings and earring sets featuring diamonds, rubies and pink sapphires, the collection is setting many heartbeats racing. To create such fragile looking and realistic flowers from the unforgiving hardness of metal and stone is testament to Chao’s ability and vision. And her success is largely born of world of mouth and not millions spent on promotion. As she says, “I believe at the end of the day it’s not about the marketing, it’s about your products. The works speak for themselves.” And speak they do…and for Cindy Chao, everything is coming up roses.

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