Vintage brass beads become flexible golden spirals in the hands of jewellery designer Carolina Wong

Vintage brass beads are teased into dynamic golden spiral jewellery by Hong Kong-born, London-based jewellery designer Carolina Wong, who brings buoyancy to traditional materials in her ‘Motion’ collection. 

‘During the first Covid lockdown, back in 2020, I was just looking for things to do,’ says Wong of how the collection began. ‘One day, while I was tidying things up in a storage box I hadn’t opened for a very long time, I found a bag of beads bought in a market. Boredom made me more creative; I was just playing around and seeing what I could get out of it. I loved how beads created this seamless, snake-like movement. It reminded me of the Fibonacci spiral, and I found that the perfect pairing for the moving golden spiral part was sea shells, as sea shells have the perfect golden ratio.’  

Golden spiral jewellery by Carolina Wong

Wong drew on her background as a textile designer for the pieces, which take the raw materials as a starting point for the golden spirals, which can be coaxed into any desired form. 

‘The mechanism is nothing fussy or over-elaborate,’ she adds. ‘The beads created this organic and natural movement; I just needed to find its perfect partner. The final product might not have the typical minimalist look, but the design process and components are rather minimalist.’

Shells punctuate the ends of the curving forms in a juxtaposition of texture and form. ‘The main challenge was how to combine the two materials together and make them look seamless at the same time,’ Wong says. ‘I didn’t want either component to overpower the other. I had to test countless ways and materials to join them together – whether to use a thread or wire – as well as size and thickness, which for this type of design matters [to a difference] as little as 0.1mm.’ 

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