Cindy Chao Celebrates 20 Years With New High Jewelry Collection
Anthony DeMarco
Senior Contributor
Forbes.com
It was 20 years ago that Cindy Chao founded her high jewelry business with $100,000 and a creative passion handed down from her father, a sculptor, and her grandfather, an architect.
Today, CINDY CHAO The Art Jewel is one of the most recognized and celebrated contemporary high jewelry brands in the world. She has a public gallery in Taipei and private showrooms in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her works are installed in museums in Washington, D.C., Paris and London; her pieces have set records at auctions; and she has exhibited her creations at prestigious art fairs including the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris, the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) and Masterpiece London.
This doesn’t include the honors she received from prestigious art and cultural organizations, highlighted in 2021 in Paris, when Chao became the first Asian jewelry artist to receive the “Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature” from the French Ministry of Culture. Or the number of times her jewels have appeared at some of the most high-profile events in the world, worn by a diverse group of international celebrities, including Michelle Yeoh, Matthew McConaughey Julia Roberts, Amy Adams, Salma Hayek and Sarah Jessica Parker.
The Taipei native now jets around the world presenting her unique pieces to private collectors. That’s when she isn’t in her Taipei studio drawing and hand-crafting her signature wax sculptors. Or she isn’t in Europe working with high jewelry artisans ensuring that her creations are made to her detailed specifications.
Chao is known for her Black Label Masterpieces, bejeweled artworks. She produces no more than 36 of these gem encrusted pieces per year, most of them crafted in strong and light titanium, a metal few have mastered for jewelry making. Each piece can take up to three years to complete. Her most celebrated Black Label Masterpieces are her butterfly brooches. She has produced one per year since 2008. They represent the pinnacle of high jewelry artistry and craftsmanship. Her first brooch, the “Ruby Butterfly Brooch” (2008), was inducted into the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2020. Her 2009 “Royal Butterfly Brooch,” was placed into the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C in 2013.
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