written by Colton Sun
Titanium was introduced to Taiwanese jewellery designer Tsai An-ho when he tried to answer an inquiry from his student 16 years ago. The vast range of colours that titanium can achieve with electrochemical machining aroused his interest to embark on a two-year exploration of titanium which began his voyage to titanium jewellery making. He is the first designer in Taiwan to ingeniously apply this aerospace metal to jewellery. His works were hammered at Sotheby's Hong Kong jewellery auctions in 2010 and 2012.
His Floral Fingertip ring won the first runner-up in the open group (finished jewellery): retail price at or over US$10,000 at the Hong Kong Fei Cui Design Biennial Contest organised by the Hong Kong Jewellery & Jade Manufacturers Association (HKJJA) in 2019. Tsai commented: “The flower cluster encircling the fei cui centre stone is my first attempt at titanium wire setting, which accounts for 60 percent of the setting technique of the ring. I am an artisan who strives for breakthroughs in craftsmanship. It is a blockbuster for a novelty and motivates me to challenge the limits of craftsmanship in the coming years.”
With a Mohs hardness of six, titanium is harder than traditional metal alloys for jewellery making. Gold has a Mohs hardness of 2.5 to three for instance. Titanium wire setting technique is a type of bezel setting. The thickness of titanium wire depends on the size of the gemstone’s girdle. Gemstones can be arranged without restraint from the mounting, just like the “flower cluster” of Floral Fingertip ring.
When sharing his artisan spirit on crafting titanium wire jewellery, Tsai said: “Frequency of annealing and heat control is the key to achieving thin titanium wire. Drawing titanium wire requires constant annealing. Drawing thin titanium wire may easily result in fracture due to the toughened internal structure of the metal during annealing. Heed should be paid to laser welding the joints of titanium wire at the gem-setting process to avoid damaging the gemstones. Polishing comes as the final stage. I pay a lot of attention to high-gloss polishing in most of my early works. Each piece takes an average of three to four hours to hand polish. This step is critical to enhancing the colours of the metal.”
In August 2020, Tsai and another designer Ru Syueh co-launched a collection dubbed Anthurium. Its Anthurium in Blue brooch is set with 0.4mm titanium wire. The tour de force took six months to craft from scratch to 928 sapphires, emeralds and yellow diamonds are interwoven. The 15.5cm long piece embodies the lightness of titanium with an astonishing weight of just 36.9g. After electrochemical machining treatment, the colours of titanium wire blends into the gemstones’ hues. The gemstones appear to be connected by a wire with an impeccable petal curve.
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