Isabella Liu to unveil new Jewellery designs in London

Jewellery from award-winning Chinese designer Isabella Liu's "Sea Rhyme" collection [Photo/China.org.cn]

A rising star has settled in to jewellery lovers' sights as the London-based Chinese artist, Isabella Liu, reveals her new "Sea Rhymes" collection, which will debut at this year's International Jewellery London--the UK's leading jewellery fair--from Sept. 4 to 6.

Wuhan-born and London-based Isabella Liu is an award-winning jewellery designer. In the few years since leaving school, Liu has won awards in Italy and Spain, and has been awarded the Goldsmiths' Craftsmanship and Design Award (the Oscar of the design world, as many have called it).

The designer is proving herself worthy of such awards with her new collection, and showing that she is a permanent fixture in the design world.

Isabella now continues to create wearable concept jewellery like her earlier collections "Scar is no more a Scar" and "Mending", this time inspired by the natural flow and sounds of the ocean. For the first time, Isabella is also expanding her work to include ornamental items that can be used as candlestick holders or vases.

Swirling and curling lines represent the ocean in Liu's new collection of women's jewellery "Sea Rhyme". Each piece of jewellery holds within it a bead of agate which, when moving, is said to sound like light waves lapping against the shore. The curves of each work seem to embrace each bead of agate like the ocean envelopes the body.

Isabella says that she is inspired by the sea, and that it reflects something of her own and other women's nature. The sea is calm yet powerful, fluid yet unmoveable, and is something wonderful to behold--much like Isabella's new designs.

"I can't swim," Isabella says. "I have never been able to swim, so perhaps that is why I revere the ocean: it whispers when it moves, it seems to breathe, and though it is mighty and vast there is something natural and gentle about its embrace when you step into it."

The "Sea Rhymes" collection comes after a period of reflection and learning for Isabella, who has plumbed the possibilities of using computer-aided design and 3D printing to bring this collection into being. It is the result of a successful voyage into creating modern jewellery that still retains an aspect of hands-on craft work.

The intricate lines and subtle curves of the collection are achieved through a computer-design process and 3D printing, but the smaller elements of each piece is brought together and worked by hand around one solid piece of clear agate to achieve the finished look. This is something that Isabella considers to be "hand-worked craftsmanship battling with high-technology". With such fine results, it is easy to see that both processes can exist alongside each other.

"Sea Rhymes" will be on show and available for purchase at this year's International Jewellery London, in Kensington Olympia from Sept. 4 to 6, 2016.