Wallace Chan

“They belong to another world, that of ultra-jewellery”

- Vanessa Cron

“Creativity is the new luxury of today”

- Juliet Weir-de La Rochefoucauld

“He's very innovative. If there is someone who is contemporary and realistic and real, it's Wallace Chan, because he uses and develops new materials. He develops new tools. In that sense he's always looking for something new, always exploring…His craftsmanship is linked with integrity and there is no compromise!”

- Patrick van Maris, CEO of TEFAF

'It's not just beautiful gems, there is a whole science behind; says. 'I see him as a material scientist. He's the greatest experimentalist”

- Raquel Alonso-Perez Harvard University's Mineralogical and Geological Museum

“His work has already claimed its place in art history… There is a kind of power and timelessness in his work that will resonate, like pieces from René Lalique did a hundred years ago.”

- Suzanne van Leeuwen, Junior Curator and Conservator of Jewellery at Riksmuseum, the Dutch national museum

“He's making those creations for the future, not for the past. He's creating a brand new era of art, which will contribute for future people, collectors - a future world. He himself is a milestone.”

- Yang Liu (collector)

Convention Shattering Innovations in Jewelry Design

The Wallace Cut

Presented to the world in 1987, Wallace Chan used his fascination with double exposure photography, and background in stone carving to create a novel 360° intaglio to create multiple reflections, so that the design can be seen from the back, front, and sides.

Mastery of Titanium

Lightweight, engravable, exceptionally strong, and colorable, Wallace Chan was fascinated by titanium’s processes, and his mastery of it as a medium has transformed it from a base metal, into the star metal of high jewelry today. With titanium, Wallace Chan is able to create large scale colorful pieces that appear to be made exclusively out of stones because so little metal is required. His ability to create exquisite pieces that combine bleeding colors, especially difficult to achieve colors such as pale green and orange, continues to set Wallace Chan apart.

Rock Crystal

As a rock carver, Wallace Chan has tamed the transparency of rock crystal to bring a new level of depth to his pieces. Confronted with the technical challenge of adding actual butterfly wings as gems in his pieces, Wallace Chan uses rock crystal to encapsulate butterfly wings, so that they do not deteriorate over time. He is also able to create unparalleled depth in each rock crystal “window” by adding texture and sculpting the crystal on both the top and bottom to create shadows and movement as light moves through it.

Jade Thinning Technique

The reason why the jade in Wallace Chan’s pieces is so rich in color is because he has pioneered (and patented) a way to harvest the brightest parts from a rough (uncut) piece of jade using a process similar to that used to maximize the value of a rough diamond.

Gemstone-Setting-Gemstone

Wallace Chan takes advantage of titanium's strength to use the tiniest quantity of the metal to hold small gemstones in place, working as prongs, to give the illusion of gemstones hovering above larger stones.

‘Mortise and Tenon’

Wallace Chan uses an architectural technique, a peg and hole method referred to as ‘mortise and tenon’, to connect elements of his jewelry so that they appear astonishingly to be connected as if by magic.

The Wallace Chan Porcelain

Wallace Chan has created a proprietary form of porcelain with exceptional strength, color, carvability, and shine to use as an integral part of his jewelry, replacing both gem and metal, to bring his pieces to the next level.

Pave under gemstones

Wallace Chan popularized the use of pave underneath large stones, to create another layer of light and movement.

Publicly Known Collectors

Yang Liu, has 25 pieces

Rebecca Wei, the former president of Christie’s Asia, has 10 pieces

Books on Wallace Chan

Wallace Chan: Dream Light Water by Juliet W. de La Rochefoucauld 2015

Winged Beauty: The Butterfly Jewelry Art of Wallace Chan by Melanie Grant, Vanessa Cron, Emily Stoehrer, Juliet Weir-de La Rochefoucauld, and Ming Lui 2021

Coveted: Art and Innovation in High Jewelry by Melanie Grant

21st-Century Jewellery Designers: An Inspired Style by Juliet Weir-de la Rochefoucauld

Book Reviews

Wallace Chan: Dream Light Water by Juliet W. de La Rochefoucauld

The Invention of Ultra-Jewellery

Relatively unknown in the western world for his first few decades of design, this gargantuan monograph introduced the world to Wallace Chan’s new standard for high jewelry.

The detailed photos of the 85 pieces showcased in this book are chosen to cause open-mouthed gasps of incredulity, as each design seems to shatter the conventions that once defined high-jewelry.

Titanium is the star of the show. Lightweight and exceptionally strong, each piece seems to be both oversized and made almost entirely of stones, as titanium is lightweight and requires very little metal to keep a gemstone in place. Where there is enough metal to catch our eye, his background in carving has made sure to engrave the titanium in such a way that no surface feels left behind. And then there are the colors… Wallace Chan has mastered the methods required to anodize the titanium to create the optical effect that captures a brilliant color, as if his palette was taken directly from the strongest rainbow. No longer will we feel limited with the colors of metal in jewelry.

Highlights in the book include Wallace Chan’s first piece in titanium, the mother elephant and child “Elation” brooch, a photo showing the secret “back” of his famous Wallace Cut, and the “Great Wall” necklace of Imperial Jade and diamonds, which when it sold for 73.5 million in 2012, was the most expensive necklace ever sold.

With very few words, but many oversized photos, this book is a decadent addition to your library, but I believe that it encapsulates the moment when high jewelry graduated to a new level of possibilities. As such, it is ideal for anyone with a passion for jewelry, jewelry design, and the history of jewelry.