Born and raised in the bustling suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I graduated from my adopted home of Melbourne, Australia, with a Bachelor’s Degree in computer science. It was a Sunday and I was walking in one of the local flea market, I was admiring the accessories along the way and had the thought of creating jewelry for myself then.
Starting with basic jewelry craft in 2007, I quickly moved on to wire jewelry two weeks later and was instantly hooked. It’s challenging. Wires will break if you don’t handle it well and your effort will be ruined, with wires I get to stay focus and be concentrate in making things I would be proud of. And I know whatever I made are going to be unique.
Thinking of a way to innovate, I realized that the art of Chinese Knot/Knotting would introduce a certain way of designing my creations, and thus began my fascination and passion for creation in this style and medium.
Wired Chinese Knotting combines art elements from the East culture and the West culture. The knotting I’ve used for this piece is one of the Chinese Knotting techniques. It is challenging to construct this Chinese Knots with wires and at the same time making them the same size consistently. Traditional Chinese Knots were initially used for practical purposes, only when the art developed and improved over years, the uniqueness of this art started to win its attention, people started to utilize them for decorative purposes.
The traditional Chinese Knots made with cords introduces rich and fun effect, and depending on the choice of cords for each Chinese Knot created, this art was then enhanced and implemented with various possibilities. People started to decorate their home and personal belongings with Chinese Knots, boring big pieces of walls became fun and interesting when introduced a piece of decorating Chinese Knot. Today, Chinese Knot is widely used as fashion accessories.
Since the traditional Chinese Knots requires a lot of pulling in action, of which wire jewelry artist would avoid doing when constructing wire jewelry, readers would likely be interested to know the trick of tying Chinese Knots with wires and find out what to watch out for in order to complete the whole process without breaking the wires.
In addition to jewelry making, I write tutorials on Chinese Knots jewelry making. Amongst the encouragement that accompanied my first tutorial though, there were some who felt that I should be writing tutorials in my mother language, on the narrow-minded pretext of there being a glut of tutorials for the English speaking audience.
I believe art should live naturally and be expressed as freely as breathing, which is why I continue to write and design as much as I can, in as many languages as I can. Wires taught me to be humble, and I give a short prayer of thanks each time they survive my designs.