London-based designer Ejing Zhang turned her hand from textiles to jewellery in 2014, but her sculptural resin jewels are, quite literally, woven with references to her past. At her Bloomsbury studio she unravels spools of Madeira ceramic and polyester thread, across a spectrum of pastel colours, into hand-carved moulds, then pours over a cold resin. once set, the resin, now rippled with threads, is polished into elliptical hoop earrings, slices to sit atop cuffs, or discs to be speared into delicate brooches.Zhang’s decision to transfer métier was prompted by a pursuit of alternative materials, rather than an inclination for fine jewels: ’I wanted to make wearable materials, but found soft fabrics restrictive. Jewellery was the answer to a question of application, of how I could apply hard plastics to the body; the process and the material came long before the jewellery.’
