Anna Hu: jewels masterpieces at TEFAF Maastricht 2023

TEFAF Maastricht, northern Europe’s premier artwork truthful, is the place one can find the best and rarest of arts together with some extremely inventive jewellers. Surrounded by masterpieces of portray and furnishings, that is the right venue for Anna Hu to disclose her newest creations as a result of a lot of her work is impressed by the humanities, whether or not or not it’s music (she was a cello protégée as a teen) or Chinese language and European portray. 

The Monaco-based Taiwanese artist-jeweller has memorably created a necklace that echoes Claude Monet’s Gardens of Giverny and final yr got here the Eglantine Rose brooch primarily based on a Leonardo Da Vinci drawing. There’s a new ruby piece drawn from the identical illustration that Anna modelled in Maastricht and can be formally revealed very quickly. Nonetheless, the most recent items, 20 in all, showcased in Maastricht are impressed by Zhang Daqian, the Chinese language grasp painter, and Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Marie Antoinette’s court docket artist. 

Zhang Daqian’s Album of Flora was the supply for the showstopper vibrant gem-set Celestial Lotus necklace in titanium, which is a part of a floral group of jewels. The Enchanted Lily bangle with a 53.92 carat peridot on a hand-painted enamelled brass stem-like bangle together with a gleaming brushed silver model, had been impressed by American artist George Walter Dawson’s Auratum Lilies.

There aren’t any drawings when Hu designs, they might be too sophisticated, and so she paints along with her gem stones. “Jewelry artwork is in regards to the unique idea, the imaginative and prescient and the attention that may see in three-dimensional perspective,” explains Anna Hu, who based her enterprise in 2007 and has damaged a number of public sale data for her work.

She takes a scholarly method to her creations researching the context during which the work originated and the music of the interval. “It’s essential to know what’s going on traditionally, as a result of my mission as a jewelry artist is to hyperlink the previous, current and future collectively,” she says. “There may be an historic thread via all my jewelry collections.”

One other instance of this thread is La Rose Rouge necklace strung with 500 pigeon blood ruby beads and a sapphire rose, drawn from Chou Konglei’s Rose but in addition recalling the Artwork Deco jewels of the French makers within the final century equally impressed by the East.

“I grew up being nurtured with China’s 5,000 years of historical past and tradition mixed with years of finding out artwork historical past within the US, and dwelling in Europe – this results in my distinctive model of creations, with ‘East meets West’ philosophy” Hu says. She feels honoured to being thought of at present an “ambassador that brings the 2 cultures collectively,” in addition to contributing to the promotion of Chinese language tradition within the international artwork area.