Spotlight: Patricia Wong Transforms Paper and Plastic into Gemstones

Born in Hong Kong and raised between HK, NYC and Toronto, Patricia Wong is pushing her jewelry design practice to entwine the opportunities that new tools such as laser cutting provide with the traditional handcrafting techniques taught at schools. We met her one morning at Hop Pop as she was preparing material for a captivating alternative to gemstones in her new collection, The Rose Tint.

Patricia told us that her collection began with a fascination of the “total creation of space and manipulation of emotions” in Japanese architecture and its transformation of paper into doors and screens. Inspired by this metamorphosis and reading the current fashion trends, she decided to use this richly textured Japanese paper as the centerpiece for her collection. Her paper-gemstones elegantly display the paper’s intricacies by laminating it between layers of clear acrylic that provide both protection for the paper and visual depth for the jewelry.

To finish designing the collection Patricia created a small stack of colourful paper-gemstones and paired them with different types of precious metals to make the final pieces. The final jewelry piece brings together a laser cut paper-gemstone that is surrounded by traditional hand work techniques.

Patricia uses her creative energy in jewelry design because each piece becomes unique through its intimate closeness with the wearer. Her jewelry begins as a manifestation of her thoughts and feelings, but the more the piece is worn the more these connotations are replaced by the wearer’s. Eventually the piece loses her intentions and carries only the wearer’s memories, thus ensuring that each piece of her design work develops its own unique meaning.

Inspired to transform something ordinary into something extraordinary? Here is a full list of materials we stock and examples of how you can use them in your project!

All images courtesy of Patricia Wong and Chaileen Kim.