Shards in Jewelry Design

Jewelry design has proven to be a popular option for recycling ceramic shards. Hobby recyclers as well as professional jewelry designers post tutorials online on how to turn china into wearables.For example, ExpertVillage Leaf Group, [How to Make Broken China Jewelry] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-aGgXluSGY)

In Ishinomaki in Japan, a city partially destroyed by the 2011 tsunami, the social enterprise Nozomi – which means ‘hope’ in Japanese – empowers women whose life has been affected by the natural disaster through creating jewelry from broken porcelain from the tsunami sites.Short documentary by dissemiNATIONstudios, Nozomi Project - Beauty from Brokenness Featuring shards from a wide range of wares including blue-and-white as well as monochrome types, Nozomi earrings, bracelets, rings and necklaces are sold to a world-wide market propagating that “there really is beauty in brokenness”.(Fig 5)

In addition, the Japanese technique of repairing broken ceramics through the use of gold – known as kintsugi – which is mainly applied to reattach pieces of precious artifacts such as cups, bowls and plates, has also left its trace in contemporary jewelry designs.(Fig 6)

Want to learn more about shard art? Click below. Or go to another object in the UpCycling Hong Kong collection.