Chinese jeweler set to capture country's soul at London Fashion Week

By Cecily Liu (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-02-20 10:09

'The Phoenix' necklace, by HMR Jewellery, made from 18k gold, hotan jade, diamond and Tahiti black pearl [Provided to China Daily]

Chinese art jewelry brand HMR is set to lead a new fashion trend of creating everlasting pieces that capture the soul of Chinese culture and history.

The company, founded in 2008 as a business mainly selling precious metal art items, has spent the past five years working on its first art jewelry collection and exhibited more than 20 highlight pieces in central London on Friday to coincide with the beginning of London Fashion Week.

Zheng Rui, founder of HMR

"Chinese culture is rich, deep and insightful because of our five thousand years of history, so when Chinese cultural elements are incorporated into jewelry we can constantly produce surprises," says Zheng Rui, founder of HMR.

"I wanted to create a brand beyond luxury. It will have artistic elements that can be appreciated today and for a long time in the future. It will be a Chinese brand in dialogue with Western culture, creating common understanding through the jewelry's extraordinary beauty and craftsmanship," Zheng says.

The pieces in HMR's inaugural collection are richly imbued with references to Chinese philosophy, poetry, and artistic elements.

Natural elements like plants, water, mountain and animals commonly occur in the jewelry designs, impeccably made through craftsmanship that HMR developed through extensive research and development, which the firm says is a unique selling point that prevents copying.

Extensive details can be observed on the jewelry pieces. One necklace featuring the Buddhist figure Guanyin in a pond surrounded with small water ripples, lotus, roots and flowers, is finely detailed. Even the smallest lines on the lotus flower petals are there, but the overall picture is one of harmony and calmness, and greatly resembles how these elements appear in nature.

Another necklace which replicates an ear of wheatmade in gold, is beautifully crafted, eachgrain ear appearing different but fittin in harmony with each other to present the image of the wheat growing full of energy while being blown by the wind.

Despite being in a stable state, the wheat necklace visually projects energy and momentum for the viewer, and is crafted to make sure its large number of spikes causes no discomfort to the wearer.

"From the details you can really see why it took us five years to create the collection. From an idea's initiation to crafting it into a practical and wearable piece, the process requires frequent communication between the artist, jewelry designer and craftsman, so we often did things again and again to strivefor perfection," Zheng says.

The collection, named Yue Jie (which translates as crossing mediums), uniquely combines the work of visual artists who draw out their ideas, jewelry designers who translate the drawings into jewelry pieces, and craftsman who create the pieces.