Lecture Wallace Chan
Lecture Wallace Chan
By: Saskia Kolff- van Es. | Photos by: Aron Nijs
A technological tour de force – that is what Wallace Chan’s jewellery is. The pieces are large, colorful, studded with hundreds of precious stones and popular among royals and other rich people. The Hong Kong artist is a master in working with titanium and has invented a series of unique techniques and materials.
SIERAAD Art Fair and the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design arranged for Wallace Chan to give a lecture in Maastricht, where an international audience filled the auditorium. Chan related how, as a boy, he learned to carve stones; he was given a chunk of malachite and discovered that you cannot change the stone – you have to follow it. After years of experimenting and using a polishing method all his own he managed to create the reflection of an image in the stone: the so-called Wallace Cut.
Events in his childhood were the reason that he also wanted to work with porcelain. At table he and other children shared a simple plastic spoon; Chan was more interested in the sound made by the spoons of the adults, but he broke his grandmother’s spoon and cut himself. He created his famous, unbreakable porcelain for the little boy he once was.
At TEFAF, also in Maastricht, his inventive settings and bright colors could be seen in real life. As a bonus Chan removed a design in the form of a snowflake from the showcase. It was his homage to the silent wonder in the night, when water turns into a crystal.
A little more about Wallace Chan you can read: http://wallace-chan.com/welcome/#the-journey