ErDong vs. Guiqi: Two Dazzling Approaches to Jadeite’s Unique Beauty!

Today, we’re unveiling two jewelry brands that share a deep love for jadeite. As we all know, the popularity of the New Chinese style in recent years has revitalized many traditional Chinese arts and crafts. This trend is also evident in the jewelry world, where more and more designers are incorporating Eastern elements into their work, each with their unique perspective on Eastern beauty.

At this exhibition, two designer brands coincidentally chose to reinterpret jadeite, a precious stone dear to Chinese hearts. However, their approaches couldn’t be more different.

ErDong Jewelry

Where East Meets West in Aesthetic Collision

ErDong Jewelry was born in 2016. Its founders, Chen Weiyang and Li Jiajia, created this independent designer jewelry brand using unique material combinations and creative inspiration.

They love combining ancient jadeite and coins with colored gemstones, creating unconventional textural effects and establishing their distinctive brand signature style. It can be said that regardless of the material, they can mix and match to create a completely new look.

Jadeite is one of their most favored gemstones, and they like to use these materials in unexpected ways, showcasing a completely different side of this quintessentially Eastern gem.

For example, their “Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix – Spirit of the White Peacock” brooch uses white ice jadeite as the main stone, carved into a feather shape. Combined with diamonds, it displays the elegant demeanor of a white peacock, integrated with light white bird feathers.

From the dynamic shape of the entire piece to the decorative techniques, it evokes the egret tiaras popular in the early 20th century, creating a spark of collision between Eastern and Western aesthetics.

Another piece, the “Big Fish and Begonia” brooch, features a dragon-stone grade, full-color, natural-shape jadeite as the main stone, crafted into an abstract and free-form fish. The fish tail design resembles a blooming begonia flower, composed of diamonds of various sizes and shapes.

It dynamically showcases the carefree enjoyment of a swaying fish tail. These brilliant diamonds also resemble the ripples created by a swimming fish, giving the entire piece a beautiful blend of the virtual and the real, motion and stillness.

Another creation by ErDong Jewelry is a ring from the “Four Seasons Series – Emerald Waves” collection, featuring an ice jadeite of imperial green as the main stone.

The sun-drenched, luscious green jadeite represents the vitality of summer, while the ribbons and bow elements – common in Western jewelry design – are outlined by yellow and white diamonds, resembling ripples encircling this pool of emerald waves. Have you noticed? Chen Weiyang and Li Jiajia are playing with contrasts, once again combining Eastern charm with Western design language to compose a jewelry ode.

These two brand directors are very interesting. Not only do they operate this way with jadeite, China’s representative material, but they also like to “reverse operate.” For instance, the “Hollow Bamboo” brooch – its theme, composition, and aesthetics are purely Eastern in style. Most people might think it should be made of jadeite, but they deliberately chose tsavorite as the main stone.

There’s also the “Classic of Mountains and Seas Series – Western City Divine Bird” brooch. Its creative inspiration comes from the “Classic of Mountains and Seas,” and the posture of this divine bird immediately evokes the compositional aesthetics of Chinese bird-and-flower paintings.

Logically, choosing jade carving would be authentic, but they opted for tanzanite carving instead. Indeed, this dazzling blue color better expresses the aura and spirit of a “divine bird.”

---

GuiQi Jewelry

Making the Traditional Unconventional

The other jewelry designer, Zhang Jingqi, brings her own designer brand, GuiQi Jewelry. She also favors traditional Chinese materials, especially jadeite, but her approach is entirely different.

She loves the classic shapes of Chinese-style jewelry but always manages to choose materials and employ diverse decorative techniques to make these traditional pieces unconventional, creating new ideas with classic styles.

For example, the “Thousand Splendors” series features a ring with a very representative traditional saddle-shaped design. However, she chose a yellow-green jadeite reminiscent of the beauty of blue-green landscape paintings as the main stone, complemented by black gold and diamonds to enhance the overall three-dimensionality. The high arch allows one to fully appreciate the exceptional natural patterns.

The brooch from the same series features a yellow-green jadeite carved into the shape of a treasure vase as the centerpiece. As you know, the treasure vase symbolizes peace, good fortune, and purity, and is a traditional Chinese auspicious pattern. GuiQi uses enamel, opal, and diamonds combined with filigree technique for the setting, giving the entire brooch a three-dimensional gemstone painting feel.

The “Phoenix Caressing Feathers” set is styled after the pipa, a traditional Chinese musical instrument. Its clear and bright tone embodies the bold and resonant spirit of “hoping for a strong wind to sweep away the clouds and reveal the sun.”

The designer chose this shape for earrings and a brooch, hoping to transport people through a thousand years to feel the magnificent ancient charm. She uses purple jadeite as the main stone, accentuated with pearls, and intentionally shapes the instrument’s head like a ruyi scepter to showcase the allure of traditional Chinese culture.

Butterflies and orchids are common thematic elements in traditional Chinese art. GuiQi’s “Michaela Butterfly” combines the butterfly and orchid into one, using geometrically cut jadeite as the body. The double-layered petals resembling an orchid unfold as wings, with the first layer of petals featuring a gradient diamond setting, while the second layer employs a honeycomb openwork technique. The two layers overlap, creating a natural tension like a flying butterfly.

The Monogram earrings adopt the traditional cabochon jadeite stud with a rectangular lattice shape. However, they actually feature the brand’s logo Monogram pattern inlaid with minimalist lines, expressing GuiQi’s brand spirit – “Extraordinary journey, transcendent solitude.”

After seeing these two designer brands that deeply love jadeite but take unconventional paths, aren’t you looking forward to appreciating them up close in person?

ErDong vs. Guiqi: Two Dazzling Approaches to Jadeite’s Unique Beauty!

Tweet