Austy Lee crafts rattan reimagined as precious jewellery
The Diamond tic Rattan Earrings merge scientific innovation with ornamental artistry, transforming an unexpected material into high jewellery of rare sophistication.
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A curious convergence of science and ornament emerges in the Diamond tic Rattan Earrings from Austy Lee’s Or En Noir Collection. The pieces represent something far more provocative than surface aesthetics: a meditation on material transformation and the boundaries between the organic and the engineered.
The foundation draws from research conducted in Italy during the early 2010s, when scientists developed a revolutionary process converting rattan wood into a bone like substance through a carefully calibrated sequence of chemical and thermal interventions. Small pieces of rattan undergo furnace treatment before calcium and carbon are introduced, followed by intense pressure heating and phosphate solution immersion. The resulting material achieves a near molecular equivalence with natural bone, a metamorphosis requiring approximately ten days. What emerged from laboratory trials in biological systems suggested a material of uncommon biocompatibility and structural integrity.
Austy Lee has distilled this scientific narrative into jewellery of considerable refinement. The earrings present eighteen karat white gold as their architectural vessel, a precious metal framework that anchors unheated Mozambican rubies of deep, unmanipulated colour. Black enamel introduces a graphic counterpoint, its matte surface creating visual rhythm against the lustre of precious metals and the crystalline fire of white diamonds. Each pair constitutes a singular creation, resisting the formulaic production that characterises much contemporary jewellery.
The Or En Noir Collection signals a design philosophy wedded to bold material juxtaposition and conceptual depth. By invoking the scientific transformation of rattan into bone, Austy Lee engages with materials as subjects worthy of intellectual scrutiny. The earrings function simultaneously as wearable art and as objects that query our assumptions about value, durability and the origins of beauty.
This is jewellery that rewards contemplation. The diamonds catch light with their characteristic brilliance, the rubies glow with the warmth of unheated stone, and the black enamel grounds the composition with quiet graphic authority. The white gold, refined through centuries of craftsmanship tradition, carries these elements forward with understated elegance.
Imagery courtesy of Austy Lee (@austy_lee).