Taiwan-born jewellery designer Cindy Chao on her masterpieces, inspiration and vision
The designer does not give in to commercial requirements – she sticks to her vision and comes up with masterpieces that are considered art
Cindy Chao materialises from the fashionable darkness of her booth at The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, Netherlands, like a panther emerging from its lair. The diminutive jeweller/artist is dressed in her trademark black, with her hair up in a bun, looking more like she is determined to cut you the deal of your life than talk about jewellery art.
The Taiwan-born Chao debuted at the Paris Biennale des Antiquaires in 2016 and is making her debut at TEFAF, arguably the world’s largest art fair, which has added a modest section on high jewellery this year. It’s a sign of the rising significance of Chao’s eponymous brand Cindy Chao: The Art Jewel on the international stage: this, and the fact that Julia Roberts chose to wear two of her pieces to present the best picture award at this year’s Oscars.
To hear Chao tell the story in her workroom later, they almost did not make it. “They wanted 50 pieces for the look book and I was like, ‘Excuse me, I don’t have 50 pieces!’ They didn’t tell me who it was for. About a week before the awards, I said we could send over 10 pieces,” recalls Chao.
Chao and her team did not hear anything more until about four days before the ceremony (which was held on February 24) and found out they had to bring the shortlisted pieces for Roberts the day before the awards. “We didn’t have time to apply for a visa and we had to go around the team to see who had a US passport so [the colleague] had to fly in and do the fitting, after which they narrowed it down to three pieces.”
Still, the team was kept on tenterhooks, unsure which pieces – if any – Roberts would pick until she walked onto the stage in her stunning pink Elie Saab gown and Chao’s diamond and pink pearls Architectural earrings and dazzling diamond Branch bangle. “My entire team was in Asia standing by the computer. The timing was perfect; it was a few weeks before TEFAF. Recently, I’ve realised [everything] has a timing. You can’t really predict when it will be and you certainly can’t control Julia Roberts,” says Chao, who celebrates her brand’s 15th anniversary this year.
While the Oscar appearance gave Chao the largest platform ever to show off her artistry (close to 30 million watched in the US alone), it is certainly not the first time that she has won international acknowledgement. Her pieces regularly break records at auctions and in 2013, she became the first Asian to have a piece inducted into the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum’s permanent collection.