Nikolai Tsang takes a Western approach in designing jade pieces

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MOST OF US are so far removed from the jewelry-making process and so accustomed to the world of mass marketing that on examining a piece of jade, we simply assume a few things: It's made in China or Hong Kong by little old men, or by machine.

Neither description would fit Nikolai Tsang, a local designer known for her Jade by Nikolai jade and precious stone creations.

She's created a niche for herself by moving beyond Asian motifs to more universal imagery of flowers, butterflies, dragonflies and nature's greenery. For as much as those of Chinese ancestry relate to jade as an all-occasion stone, even gifting baby girls with bangles, Tsang realized there's a vast untapped market that could not.

"People think about jade as being something Asian, with carvings of dragons, clouds and gods that have been done for so long, and they couldn't relate to that. They also think of it as being limited to green when there are actually nine colors."

In taking a more Western approach to design, Tsang is making a name for herself internationally. Her collections are carried in boutiques such as Fred Segal in Los Angeles; Fortunoff in New York; Harrod's in London; and Le Bijoux, Auxtortuef, and Orient Galeria in Paris. Locally, her designs are carried exclusively at Hildgund Jewelers, with prices starting at $50 to $70.

Working with jade over the past eight years has represented a homecoming for the designer, who majored in fashion design and international business at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles after graduating from Star of the Sea School.

After graduating, she found she didn't want to be involved in fashion after all because of the blink-and-you're-out pace of trends that she felt was "wasteful."

With jewelry, on the other hand, there's more of a tendency to treasure them for life and pass them on to the next generation as a family heirloom.

She had grown up frequently traveling with her jeweler father on his buying trips to Burma, China and Hong Kong in search of rough jade, and in the process managed to learn every aspect of carving and polishing jade. In coming home from school, she said, "I didn't know what to do, but when I saw the jade again I was drawn to it. I was a little bit older. I knew what I was looking at, and it's a living stone.

"It's really special. When you cut open a jade boulder, which can be anywhere from refrigerator to baseball size, sometimes there's actually water still in the jade. It's so amazing to see. That's when you definitely know it's alive.

"When you wear a piece like that, there's a glow to it. Sometimes it intensifies in color. I know for sure, because I've seen it. There's a luster that makes the jade even more beautiful over time."

It's this living quality that's treasured by the Chinese, who often wear jade jewelry as a talisman to ward off evil or to guard one's health. When not worn, pieces are stored with a miniature teacup filled with water to prevent the stone from drying out.

In spite of this living, seemingly soft quality, jade is not easy shaped.

"Jade is very hard," Tsang said. "It's the second-hardest stone, right under diamond. We have to carve it under water to keep from burning or drying the stone."

She does the work on her pricier pieces herself and employs two other carvers to create the charms that go into her silk-cord bracelets and necklaces.

It's the polishing process that brings out jade's translucent beauty and luster. Tsang sends her carved work to Hong Kong to undergo a two-step 40-day polishing process involving water tumbling followed by hand-finishing, versus a typical 10 days for other operations that skip the handwork.

"From start to finish, it's a two-month process," she said.

Tsang initially created decorative carvings the size of Japanese netsuke, only to find those who collected one too many of her art pieces asking, "What do I do with these?"

That's when she started placing her creations on silk cords, and has since moved on to incorporate leather and wood in her designs, as well as combining jade with precious and semiprecious gems. Her wood collection is called Fuel; a coral collection is Delicious; and quickly growing in popularity is her Wink & Flirt collection of precious and semiprecious gemstone jewelry, depicting insects and flowers.

"Jade is almost like a lost art, but within the last five years my line has really expanded internationally," she said. "People who are not Asian have been interested in learning about jade. It's more mainstream."