Crafting Jewellery With Your Hands

Text: C.Martin

 

I watched as Miriam, the student of Obellery’s jewellery-making workshop, polished and cut her thin piece of metal with smooth, gentle strokes. In a few hours’ time, it would become her very own handmade, self-designed silver ring.

                       

Although I didn’t know much about jewellery and how it was made, I could tell when someone was enjoying the process of making it. And teaching it.

The three owners and designers of Obellery, Hugo Yeung, Belinda Chang and Kody Chan, were pretty easy-going people who had a funny way of getting along. I remember my conversations with the three of them, which nearly always ended up with Belinda and Kody making fun of Hugo. According to Kody and Belinda, Hugo was the one who always made fun of them in subtle ways.

They each had their unique style and tastes of jewellery making. Belinda liked working with pearls, while Kody liked to incorporate elements of nature into her designs. Hugo, on the other hand, liked playing around with geometric forms.

The name “Obellery” was a combination of the “object” with “jewellery”. Looking around at the unique styles of jewellery displayed around the shop, it wasn’t that hard to notice the subtle harmony of the object and the piece of jewellery in each item.

The design of the jewellery in Obellery was somewhat different from what I was accustomed to seeing in other places. When I asked about this, Kody smiled and said that Obellery crafted contemporary jewellery, which meant that all the jewellery was hand-crafted and their designs were more…extravagant and on the loose, less traditional.

As Miriam was working on her ring, I was able to talk with her for a bit. It turned out that Miriam was a designer of accessories and jewellery for a German brand herself! But Miriam wasn’t involved in the making process as she was merely in charge of designing what and how they would look like.

She said that this course at Obellery was a gift for herself of sorts, as she wanted to try to learn how to make something with her own hands. Who knows, maybe it would give her a bit of inspiration for her ongoing projects in Germany!

I was caught off guard when I glimpsed the course that taught how to handcraft your very own wedding ring. Yeah it was probably ten years too early for me to start planning, but imagine making your own wedding ring with your own hands! That ought to be something memorable and significant.