The Stone is Me - Jewelry Artist and Innovator Wallace Chan interviewed by The New York Times

Wallace Chan is a jewelry artist, sculptor and innovator. A devotee of both innovation and craftsmanship, he creates jewerly pieces that reflect on the past and embody the spirit of our times. His relationship with gemstones began in 1973, when he was 16 years old. He became a gemstone apprentice at a carving workshop. Today, he is one of the most celebrated jewelry artists in the world, with creations featuring some of the rarest materials. His gemstones are his teachers, guiding him through the creative process. In this video, he shares his experiences with the New York Times.

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Wallace Chan, the Hong Kong jeweler behind the creation of what has been called the world’s most expensive diamond necklace, began working with his hands when he was 8 years old.

In the 1960s his family migrated from the impoverished Fujian Province to Hong Kong, where they made money from odd jobs. The boy was put to work on repetitive tasks best done by small hands, like spooling yarn or assembling cheap decorative goods.

“We made plastic flowers until our fingers bled,” he said, speaking in Cantonese during an interview at his studio. “We got 10 cents for every bag of plastic flowers. I still remember — and for 15 cents we could get two pineapple buns.”

Mr. Chan, 59, now works in an upstairs studio in Central Hong Kong, something of a fortress, with double electronically locked doors. A slight man with a long gray beard, wearing a plain black suit, he sat in a back room — a black cloth thrown over his desk, the shades drawn against the sunlight — and assessed bag after bag of uncut, unpolished stones, each one the size of a golf ball.

“The stone tricks the eye, so I have to outsmart it,” he said, peering at a lump of topaz with a flashlight. “I can see its flaws and angles. There are elements I want to hide and elements I want to bring out. I am chasing its light.”

Read the interview here: http://bit.do/fMZD8

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