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Designer's choice

Pub Date:2008-07-03 10:21 Source:HK Edition

 

Where would a piece of 1000-year-old jade end up after being excavated? For many, the obvious answer would be either a public or private collection. For Kai-Yin Lo, there's no better place to put it than to hang it around her own neck.

On Tuesday, the 53-year-old designer was given the Silver Bauhinia Award by the SAR government in recognition of her cultural contribution.

"I don't believe in things that are not part of life," said the jewelry designer who is also an avid collector and a dedicated researcher of traditional Chinese art - the art of living in particular.

Lo was speaking in her own apartment at a high-end residential compound on Garden Road. She had just come back from Japan, where a retrospective of her jewelry design is currently being held.

"It's really moving to see the entire family had come, wearing my designs from two decades ago," said Lo. "Usually, the Japanese like their own designers, and the designers from America."

Or, designers who had made a name in America, as in the case of Kai-Yin Lo. One often-told story is how Lo entered the design business "by accident".

It was 1978 when the 23-year-old Lo was working at the public affairs department of Time magazine in New York. Everyday on her way to work, Lo passed by a Cartier outlet until one day she stopped and showed the staff there some of her own designs. "The piece they were most interested in was the one I was wearing," Lo recalled.

The jewelry company bought the entire first collection of 32 pieces.

 

"At that time I didn't realize that a designer faces so many hurdles," said Lo, whose design career spanned three decades. "When you are young, you really want to give it a try."

But the decision did hint at something about Lo, a lady with an adventurous streak who always follows her own heart.

These days, Lo's sitting room is filled with an array - or disarray - of her own collection of contemporary art and antique furniture. There were also those designs that launched her career: chunky pieces of carved jade and copper connected by thick hand-braiding. Imbued with history and patinaed by time, those are weighty pieces, both literally and metaphorically.

"History permeates my life," said the designer who was educated at Cambridge and London Universities. "I majored in European history, and that certainly makes me more aware of my own history," she said.

However, it is an "energized" version of history that the designer is really interested in, as a glance at her own living area suggests. The style could be better described as "Hollywood Road meets New York's SoHo": colorful modern paintings sit on top of antique wicker cabinet or serve as backdrop to ancient pottery horses. The pile of books on a Ming armchair seems both deliberate and unintentional.

Lo has texturalized her own home through an anachronistic mixing of objects.

If anything, the space exudes a vibe that Lo has sought to capture through her jewelry design: a casual historicism and a studied nonchalance.

Strung together, the stones and metals, of different age, shape and polish, contrast while at the same time accentuate one another. (The random juxtaposition is also reflected by the artistic littering around of all sorts of curio shop trinkets in Lo's home.)

The designs are underlined by what Lo calls an "unequal equilibrium", or "imbalanced balance". Whatever the term, it offers a creative, not to mention permanent, solution to the problem faced by Lo early in her career.

"It was so difficult to find a matching pair of jade or whatever other stones I was working with," Lo recalled. "So I eventually dispensed with matching and instead sought to achieve balance through volume and color."

The resulting designs are both witty and whimsical, dancing with the rhythm of fashion while at the same time anchored by a tactile sense of history. Neither loud nor mute, they speak for not only the character, but also the idiosyncrasies of its wearer.

According to a newspaper report, Lo was once seen wearing a leopard spotted slipper on one foot and a blue floral one on the other. The lady has taken "bespoke dressing" to a new level.

According to the designer, her quirky sense of style was in the same mismatch spirit as has inspired her jewelry design. "It has nothing to do with creating drama," she said.

But it certainly hasn't gone unnoticed. "Wall Street Journal once carried an article on executive travel and cited my example as a way of saving suitcase space," Lo said, laughing disbelievingly. "Can you imagine walking into the boardroom wearing different shoes?"

Being a successful business woman who sits on various boards and committees, Lo knows all about the practical side of life - a side she has embraced whole-heartedly. "I design and collect to add to my living," said the designer who entertains friends at home with antique porcelain tea cups and dinner wares she designed and made in Jingdezhen - the famous "Hometown of Chinese Porcelain" on the mainland.

"I have always loved the simple lines and understated elegance of Song porcelain and Ming furniture," said the designer, speaking of her two greatest passions in collection. "If I had been hoarding up antiques from the Qing period, I would have made a lot of money."

But things too ornate and crafty don't suit her taste. "You design not into a motif, but into a spirit," she said.

 

For Lo, two things embody that spirit. One is knot, a recurrent theme adopted by Lo at the beginning of her design career. The other is "lingzhi", or "mushroom of immortality", a plant whose symbolic meaning of renewal is embedded in traditional Chinese culture.

"Knot is a universal symbol of bonding," said the designer. For proof, she showed pictures of a Syrian amphitheater and Muslim mosques in Lebanon, taken by her during a recent trip to the region. "I found the knot pattern on the buildings' walls and beams," said Lo, referring to a discovery that gave her "sudden satisfaction".

"Knot is one of the eight Buddhist emblems. It is also a wonderful decorative visual language used on textiles," Lo said. "Keeping in mind that trade and religion are the two most powerful tools for cultural fertilization, it's no wonder that knots are found these days across the globe."

If Lo has traveled extensively enough to discover in one pattern "the great linkage between civilizations", she has also looked deep enough into her own cultural heritage.

"You see 'lingzhi' everywhere," said the designer, pointing at the wooden window panes she had salvaged on her previous trips to Anhui province and had placed at various spots inside her home. The intricate carving of the window panes feature the flower-shaped plant idolized for its vitality.

Apart from inspiring her jewelry creations, "lingzhi" also appeared on a cashmere shawl Lo designed for Shanghai Tang to mark the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China.

"When I returned to Hong Kong in the late 70s, I plunged myself into knowing about my own history," said Lo, looking back to a period of creative fermentation in her life.

"And that stimulated a great passion that lasts to date."

Editor:

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