Wallis Hong’s signature is a hyperreality in titanium motion. His youth, knowledge of grand European jewellery history, and the figurative scale of his creations have won over many insider admirers, including curators.
Hong, 28, has steadily racked up prestigious connections and backers since his first global jewellery show at GemGenève 2022. His clients include the show’s co-founder Ronny Totah and his daughter Nadège, who invited him to take part in the show. The rising star’s love of rich hues also caught the attention of the world’s renowned gemstone players. Additionally, he has recently added his Thorn Shell earrings to the permanent collection of the Shenzhen Jewellery Museum in China, where he was born.
“This is my best year so far, being able to share my creativity with more and more people. I always believe in myself, and my progress right now feels natural. I will have some amazing new designs to reveal soon,” he says.
Photo: Wallis Hong.
HEART OF THE MATTER
The son of a singer mother and an export director father developed an interest in jewellery from an early age. In his teens, he admired the stage costumes his art-loving mother wore, along with her favourite jewellery, as she sang and danced at home while reminiscing about her past. Once, Hong tried on some pieces. “That very special experience gave me a profound understanding of beauty and elegance,” says the designer.
He usually expresses himself with an endearing mix of enthusiasm and composure. With his curiosity, soft voice, and pop star-like style, this emerging creative carries a Peter Pan quality. A frequent traveller, his cultural agility allows him to filter different cultures’ aesthetics into a potent mix. “I don’t feel like I belong to any country now. I am just a free spirit travelling the world and gathering inspiration from different cultures.”
Photo: Wallis Hong.
Regular visits to his grandfather’s Buddhist temple as a child, with its statues, murals, decorative patterns, lotus flowers, and symbols, made him revere the East and centuries-old artistic traditions. He will, however, refresh them. “I want to play with traditional Chinese and Asian art, like cut-paper artwork from our festive rituals and eggshell sculpture, but give them a new vitality,” he explains.
His magical realism is crafted from a cascade of novel ideas and poetic memories conceived late at night. During his twilight creativity in his Madrid apartment, he imagines magnificent jewellery that evokes his childhood Eden in rural Guangdong province.
Photo: Wallis Hong.
René Lalique has always been one of Hong’s greatest influences. It follows that the fan of cytology enjoys Art Nouveau’s flowing and energetic plant shapes. An encounter with Lalique’s Dragonfly Woman corsage ornament at Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum crystallised his ambition as an artist. “It is a living sculpture. I became emotional viewing the masterpiece in person. It felt magical and divine.”
That moment left him wondering how he could develop meticulous jewellery techniques from the past into abstract and contemporary representations of nature.
BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS
Through Hong’s vivid childhood memories, his bold jewels almost seem to have a magical quality to them. As a storyteller who loves to tell his early years to explain his ideas, he embraces his intent to enchant jewellery lovers.
“I feel I give people joy with my work. And I want the people who wear my jewellery to feel like beings from a magical kingdom or planet, or characters from a fairy tale. I believe my jewellery has magical powers.”
A perilous and beautiful garden playground has shaped Hong’s jewellery, especially his precious butterflies. When he was 6, a massive butterfly with a blueish-yellow gradient emerged from a cave near his home in the remote hamlet of Manchon as he chased butterflies. As a tribute to that beloved vision from so many years ago, his large Eternal Butterfly brooches appear hydrous and electrified.
Brooches are his favourite type of jewellery. Other wild things that inhabit his backyard—deadly mushrooms, poisonous snakes, and spiders—inspire many of his designs. He’s recently been studying reptiles, so it seems butterflies won’t be a given.
“I am working on a baby crocodile I had originally planned to be 22cm. It’s been revised to 16cm but will still be a big brooch commanding attention. It will not be solid or aggressive. I want it to look like an angel. And it will not be green!” says Hong.
SCULPTED IRIDESCENCE
Hong’s love for ambitious animal figures reflects his interest in sculpture. He took sculpture and painting courses at the Madrid Academy of Art after moving to Spain in 2016 for love. His ease with multiple art forms is one reason he ended up in the jewellery atelier. He designed his own necklace several years ago after failing to find one he liked. The personal project sparked his professional quest to create jewellery.
Hong has a self-taught and collaborative spirit. To immerse himself in the foundations of jewellery, he took private workshops with different artisans to study the basics of wax modelling, casting, setting, polishing, gold plating, and titanium colour anodising. “I find self-confidence in the process of continuous learning.”
He works with artisans in Hong Kong and, most recently, Geneva. He seeks masters in higly specialised techniques to gain new technical knowledge and pushes his team to realise his innovative ideas. Hollowed-out carvings are the pinnacle of jade artistry, and he adapts their intricacy with titanium or metal, as shown in the lace-like wings of his Ethereal Butterfly brooch.
Hong mainly brings his modernity to classic subjects with his materials. Titanium is his favourite rainbow metal, and he prefers to use it in blue hues to create a sense of the bioluminescence of underwater realms. Likewise, he uses pastel blue gemstones like paraiba tourmaline for a similar effect and gravitates towards patterns that remind him of the coastal world.
Radiating forms evoke the sea and interplanetary jewels. In Hong’s eyes, even a fish spine or a centipede wrapped around a neck can form the basis for an unexpected necklace design because of similar radiating designs within bone arrangements. “I can’t stop noticing these concentric patterns in nature that seem to possess a special energy,” he explains.
Although Hong, born in the city of Huizhou, used Madrid as his launch pad, his reputation has now spread across the continent and beyond, including to his native China, where he is currently absorbed in the final stages of producing a series of 10 unique jewels.
It’s his first time seeing his family since the pandemic and it will be one of several visits this year. He also proudly mentions being invited to speak at Beijing’s esteemed Central Academy of Fine Arts in the middle of the year.
Hong prefers exhibiting in museums, auctions, and galleries rather than retail stores, despite being under 30. As he contemplates his legacy, he plans to create art objects as well. “I want to create something that is not just beautiful now but will remain so later.”
