Chen Weiyang, a Generation-Z jewellery designer based in China, has been working with the producer of Da Vinci’s Egg, the country’s renowned digital artwork NFT (non-fungible token).
As the founder of Erdong Jewellery, Mr. Chen Weiyang is an award-winning jewellery designer, as well as a member of the League of Designers by Harper’s BAZAAR Jewelry (China), the renowned print magazine. Chen’s works have been featured in the auctions by China Guardian Auctions and Poly Auction – China’s top auction houses – both in Hong Kong and mainland China. He has been designing jewellery with diamonds, jadeite, coloured gemstones and ancient coins. Besides the magnificent creations he designs for extravagant events, Chen is also exploring with jewellery designs to fit with casual apparels.
Davinci’s Egg is a futuristic science fictional IP, featuring a giant egg-shape flying object. Hangzhou Xing Ying Zhi Yuan Digital Technology Co., the producer of the NFT, has been working with various sectors in business and culture in China, including Century Mart, a prominent supermarket chain, China Aerospace Group, and the Writers’ Association of Zhejiang Province, etc.
The newly launched hybrid NFT by Chen Weiyang consists of both physical and digital versions of a bespoke jewellery. There are two series in the products, one looking back to the past, and one looking forward to the future. The design of the jewellery lands in metaverse in virtual form, and on the other hand, everyone who buys the NFT is able to receive a physical jewellery product. For Chen Weiyang, it is his first attempt to combine the visual tension of virtual jewellery with the reality of physical jewellery in terms of fantasy and feasibility.
The first series is of nostalgia and retro style, featuring China’s national cultural icon of blue and white porcelain. “Considering most collectors of digital artworks are gentlemen, I hope to design one piece with a higher probability of wearing, so I chose the cufflink,” said Chen Weiyang. He combined it with the blue and white pattern to conveys the ancient culture and achieved a harmony with today’s digital art collection. In the design of the high-end brooch, Chen incorporates the design elements of the Chinese folding fan, which has a long history as the standard of the ancient literati and officialdom.
The other series of jewelry, of futuristic style, comes from the “Omnic Future” series. “Since everything in the virtual space can be freely scaled and transformed, why not jewellery?” said Chen Weiyang. With this concept in mind, he used “infinite possibilities” as the key word in the design to create a necklace that can be shortened or enlarged freely, and achieved multiple transformations in form through stackable elements.
Through the new hybrid NFT series, Chen Weiyang and “Da Vinci’s Egg” joined forces to open the portal between the virtual and the real world, and handed over a splendid crossover solution. “People are accustomed to call me a designer because Erdong Jewelry is a designer brand. But technically speaking, neither my partner nor I are jewellery designers graduated from a gemological school. I studied art, and from the experience at the China Academy of Art, the inner sense of art is much more important than the design techniques. The creation of an artist really needs inspiration and impulse, which sounds far-fetched to the layman, but those who understand art know that inspiration really exists and ignites designs. The interconnectedness of art is particularly prominent in the field of design. For our generation born after 1995, there are a lot to inherit as a descendant of an ancient country, and a lot more to explore as a Digital Native,” concluded Chen.
