Recycled Paper Jewellery
The three-dimensional component of Hollowing Out evokes associations with necklaces and garlands.
Trained at the Fine Arts Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the painter and sculptor Chu Cheuk-wai Margaret, known as Margaret Chu, has created independent and commissioned pieces. Some of her work is collected by the Art Promotion Office of Hong Kong. In 2014, Chu was also selected as one of the Design Talents of “40 under 40 Young Stars 2014” by Perspective Magazine, and she has received numerous awards including the “Ding Yanyong Art Award” by the Fine Arts Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the “MTR • Tiara Sculpture Competition Recommendation Awards” and the “Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards 2012”(Fig. 2).
Artists world wide have used the recycling of paper to create jewellery. For example, Liz Hamman, a mixed-media artist from Cheshire (UK), uses various techniques to manipulate the paper of unwanted books, maps and other ephemera, thereby transforming them into necklaces, bracelets and other items (Fig 3). In some of her pieces Hamman also uses origami techniques. Origami jewellery has become a new branch of the constantly modernizing traditional arts of Japanese paper-folding.
In Hong Kong, the architect-by-training Janet Mark has developed a series of paper jewellery works with the title “Roll, Quill, Stack, Fold, Bond, Interlock. An Old Dictionary Finds New Life,” which features earrings, necklaces and bracelets created out of hand-made paper bud beads.(Fig. 4)