Jewelry company Chung’s Silver Work Studio celebrates its first decade this year despite sticking to a decidedly non-commercial philosophy. Just two people make its highly detailed sterling silver jewelry, and owner Chung Wei-wen (鍾維文) refuses to discount his work.
“I feel promotions like clearance sales don’t respect the value of handmade work,” says Chung, who founded Chung’s Silver Work Studio with his wife Liu Lan (劉嵐). “But even without them we’ve been around for 10 years, so I think we’re doing okay.”
Crafted by Chung and an apprentice in his studio near Zhongshan MRT Station (中山捷運站), most jewelry by Chung’s Silver Work Studio is inspired by nature and motifs found in traditional Chinese art.
Photo courtesy of Chung’s Silver Work Studio
One bracelet is composed of ridged sterling silver links that glisten like sunlight on ocean waves when held up to the light. The gentle arch of bamboo reeds waving in the breeze inspired a pendant embellished with a tiny peridot cabochon. Another pendant is a simple brushed silver circle meant to evoke taichi movements.
Before becoming a jewelry designer, Chung was a freelance stylist. He and Liu worked as a team for advertising and record companies and taught classes at Shih Chien University (實踐大學). But after eight years in the fashion business, Chung began to feel burned out.
“Stylists actually spend a lot of their time in meetings. I had to keep compromising until the final result was something I wouldn’t have done,” he says.
Photo courtesy of Chung’s Silver Work Studio
Chung, who began collecting and wearing sterling silver bracelets in high school, also had a hard time finding suitable accessories. “I had control over the clothing the models wore, I could do their hair and make-up, but I could never find jewelry I liked,” Chung says.
The former fashion design student decided to hole up in his home on Yangmingshan and teach himself jewelry-making by studying technique books. Most of the DIY volumes available were in English and Chung says he only understood a third of the instructions, learning the rest of the techniques through trial and error.
The first pieces by Chung’s Silver Work Studio were sold at a cafe where Liu worked part time before the company expanded to four department stores throughout Taipei City, including Eslite’s Dunnan and Tianmu branches. But Chung felt uncomfortable selling in a competitive retail environment. While the company’s newest items have special introductory prices, Chung was reluctant to hold further sales, put items on clearance (most of Chung’s Silver Work Studio jewelry ranges in price from NT$990 to NT$10,900) or create holiday-themed pieces like heart-shaped jewelry for Valentine’s Day.
Photo courtesy of Chung’s Silver Work Studio
“One customer asked, ‘Who do you think you are, [Louis Vuitton]?” Chung says. “I had no idea until the end of our first year at Eslite that our sales were last among all the merchants.”
He eventually closed his department store counters to focus on his combination studio and store, which opened in 2009, and another shop on Yongkang Street.
Chung uses lost wax casting, in which the design is first carved into a wax prototype used to make a mold, for three-dimensional pieces with finer detailing, and silversmithing for larger items, including limited edition teapots that Chung began making after customers who were tea connoisseurs told him the beverage tastes better when brewed in sterling silver containers. Instead of electroplating, which Chung avoids because of the chemicals involved, all jewelry is polished by hand, creating a soft luster.
Photo courtesy of Chung’s Silver Work Studio
While Chung’s first pieces were inspired by Bauhaus design, his company’s signature is now finely detailed jewelry inspired by traditional Chinese art and carvings or nature. One pair of earrings is based on the way ocean waves are rendered in watercolors, while a ring is shaped like a lion doorknocker.
One of the company’s most popular items is a pendant with hoops that double as a bubble wand. Chung created it by experimenting with twisting a thin stem of silver into curlicues after watching a street vendor knot balloons into different shapes.
A Siamese cat his family once owned served as the muse for Chung’s favorite series. “He was gorgeous and had a unique personality, very fierce but gentlemanly at the same time,” Chung says. One pendant has the feline stretching its lithe body out, his front paw reaching for an invisible target.
Photo courtesy of Chung’s Silver Work Studio
“I’m not a very creative person. I can’t just imagine things, I have to see them first,” Chung says. “But when I see something beautiful, I use my jewelry to make a record of it.”
Photo courtesy of Chung’s Silver Work Studio
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s