Spring Garden: Jeweler Hsiang-Ting Yen

Hsiang-Ting Yen
Spring Garden
Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology and traditional Chinese aesthetics
Most Recent Craft Show: Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2011
Upcoming Exhibition: Thesis Exhibition Gender 3.0 (March 2012)

Hsiang-Ting Yen is a soon-to-be graduating student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Originally from Taoyuan, Taiwan, she came to the United States to study jewelrymaking at the urging of her metalsmithing teacher.

While she's now a burgeoning jeweler, Hsiang-Ting's subject of study at National Dong Hwa University was business. While there, she worked under metalsmithing teacher Su-Ya Lin. Recognizing her true calling, Su-Ya encouraged the young artist to study Metals and Jewelry for her graduate schooling. This began Yen's odyssey to the United States, where she is about to graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design, at its Savannah location.

Hsiang-Ting's work has had two directions; her thesis project, examining contemporary gender issues, and her In Bloom brooches, two evolving series of enamel work on wire forms. In Bloom springs from Yen's background in Chinese watercolor painting. The first series utilizes layers of graceful wire outlines to create the contours of flowers and leaves; opaque enamel fills in parts of the form, vividly bringing them to life. The layered outlines give the pieces dimensionality, raising the design towards the viewer. Thus with bare and subtle attention, Yen uses a minimum of material to yield maximum representation.

In Bloom Series #2 both builds upon the first and explores a very different direction. Inspired by the Gongbi style of Chinese water color, this second series of jewelry is explosively colorful. Now the flowers and leaves are more literal representations, gorgeously rendered in pastel pinks, blossom whites, reds, grasshopper green and magenta hues. Each flora has now been joined by a particular fauna; a monarch butterfly or hummingbird hovers or rests upon each piece. The more extensive enamel work changes the visual focus from the form and contours of the brooch, to the center, where the illustrated depiction is reinforced by the concentric circular forms that draw one's attention inwards.


What I find most impressive about Yen's work is her visual diversification from her first and second series. It is no easy feat to develop a new aesthetic, and yet it is clear from her work that she was able to borrow elements from her first series, and transform them through the alchemical process of creativity into a new form that both builds upon the old, and yet is distinct from it. The shift of drawing attention from contour and edge to the center is achieved with graceful simplicity.


Yen has found it easier to establish her own artistic voice here in the United States. As one of a new generation of jewelers, Hsiang-Ting is already exploring the creative potential of her dual circumstances, being a Taiwanese living in America.

Her work can be found at www.hsiangtingyenjewelry.com.