A Curatorial Vision of Eight Designers at Romanian Jewelry Week 2026

Fangjing Hu
For artist Fangjing Hu, jewelry, nature, and the human body form an ecosystem of emotions and intense sensory experiences. The three ingredients are permanently in a state of interdependence, producing a celebration of colour alongside a tactile and emotional experience. The senses discover the particular value of the structural details that the artist uses to remind us that everything surrounding us is part of something much larger, and that the part and the whole speak equally about one another.


Fangjing Hu. Brooch: Breathing Form, 2019. Silver, enamel. 3 x 3 cm.


Rose Luker
There are not many designers who possess the inner strength and clarity to engage, through their personal work, in a dialogue with the history of art. Dialogue with art and culture is usually reserved for those who can naturally make choices that faithfully represent their principles and vision. Rose Luke, a travelling artist, possesses this ability to look at her own creative experiment from the outside while remaining emotionally involved in its making.

Within this kind of dual process, I believe we can recognize the iconic presence in her works and the feeling that the jewellery she creates has existed since the beginning of time. Whether we are speaking about modular geometry or natural structures and textures, the proportions and forms of Rose's works breathe that fresh and fragrant air of perennial ideas in universal design.


Rose Luker. Cuff bracelet: Infinity Cuff, 2025. From Strange Attractors series. Sterling silver. 200 x 4 x 1.2 cm. Photo: Matthieu Lavanchy.
 

Vanessa Ree
The world of Vanessa Ree's jewellery is one of exploration and a journey into ideas. The meaning of the inner worlds that Vanessa investigates is amplified by the impact of discovering answers to questions she addresses with undisguised courage.

The artist embraces the challenge and risk that artists and adventurous explorers know so well. This leads us to the observation that Vanessa has her own path through the world, a path gained through exploration within the ideas and forms of her own jewellery.

It seems that the artist's art and biography merge into a single endeavour, which we see materialized in her jewellery collections. Thus, Vanessa's artistic practice becomes a journal of ideas reflecting a broad and profound journey, but above all, it is a very sincere journey.

Vanessa Ree. Ring: Sunburst U-shaped Ring, 2026. Sunburst sterling silver sheet, 22ct gold, golden rutilated quartz. 2.2 x 1.5 x 2.8 cm.


Yier Lu
Looking at Yier Lu's work, the first sensation is that we are standing before an author who understood early on how important it is to study and deepen one's knowledge. Her jewellery works fully reflect the idea of dense content, with balanced details, within a space of strong and consistent ideas and concepts, capable of supporting both the compositional and conceptual construction.

The space that emerges around Yier Lu's jewellery is organized according to the fundamental principles of microarchitecture. Without creating architecture in miniature, the artist creates, in the presence of the idea of meaning, spaces that have nothing more and nothing less than what they need, where every element and every detail fulfils a role.
Another important aspect is that engaging with Yier Lu's jewellery requires time, analysis, and deciphering. You cannot understand the meaning of the jewellery without discovering its structural code in relation to the artist's idea. From this perspective, we can say that Yier Lu creates universes that she analyses and develops with each individual piece of jewellery.


Yier Lu. Brooch: Emotions, 2026. Fine silver, sterling silver, Keum-boo with 24ct gold. 3.4 x 3. 4 cm.


Alina Ionescu Atelier Mascari
The intention to return to a primordial time requires both inner strength and time spent on research, documentation, and meditation. In the work of Atelier Mascari, we find a preoccupation with the archaic themes of pre-Christian rituals, a space of figures of fear and magic, values preserved alongside the contemporary religious world and despite the enormous ideological differences between paganism and Christianity.

The frightening image of demons represented through folk masks can be found throughout Europe. From the white north of the Scandinavian countries to the south of the Balkans, with Romania being no exception in preserving rituals of passage into the new year through the frightening of evil with its own image, these masks bear witness to collective fear and the permanent conflict between good and evil.

The aesthetics of the masks correspond to an imaginary of fear and the representation of evil, illness, nightmares, and failure. The ritual created by people serves to exorcise and cleanse the spiritual and physical space of all these ill-omened things. Thus, Atelier Mascari proposes an incursion in which the representation of evil becomes an antidote, a mechanism for liberation from the negative spectre of existence.


Alina Ionescu Atelier Mascari. Bracelet (cuff), 2026. Silver 925, natural sheep wool, leather.


The Vāult: Three Creators Elena Dobrovolsky, Alex Dalevich and Alexey Serbinov
Collective artwork most often relies on the complementarity of the group creating in a manner where the rules always have a particular dynamic, with decisions and causality certainly no longer functioning in the same way as in an individual project. And certainly, in this case too, the classical relationship between concept, form, and content remains within the same framework.
The paradox of the three artists' project lies precisely in the challenge it puts forward. Identity, belonging, mythology, memory — all these qualities of human civilization capable of creating cultures and history are clearly delegated to cutting-edge technology, microchips, and data processors that elevate information to a level of certainty, without ambiguity.

The three create instruments of personal and collective memory that store information with objective clarity. Moving from the initial territory of collective memory, subject to variables and inaccuracies, the new mnemonics evolves towards a level of objective certainty. The possibility thus emerges for memory to have as its permanent source of nourishment information, rather than subjective narration.

The presence of cutting-edge technology sends cold shivers through those attached to spirituality, rituals, or any form of tradition. Without realizing that all the generations before us have faced the same cognitive challenges in harmonizing innovation and tradition, we irrationally feel, in this case, that science is more of a threat than an advantage. Although, when it comes to science, the simplest and most appropriate thing would simply be to say that science exists.


Elena Dobrovolsky, Alex Dalevich, Alexey Serbinov. Ring and Pendant: The Vāult, 2026.
Photo by Elena Nalhanova. 



Chuhan Xiao
Preserving the past and structuring memory are perhaps among the oldest concerns of human culture. The value of precedent and the criteria of remembrance construct a cognitive system, and this structure for preserving information, which makes us who we are, is of crucial importance to us as individuals and as societies.

From the earliest proto-writings to advanced computer languages, recording the facts of the past remains a form of collective identity, one that structures our understanding of the future.
For Chuhan Xiao, memory and the past are personal and subjective notions. Looking at the designer's extremely elaborate artefacts, there is a dual sensation that you have suddenly entered an inner world in which a symbolic ritual is unfolding.

Even the technical manner in which Chuhan Xiao's jewellery is constructed involves the notion of ritual time, much like the making of a textile in which, thread by thread, all the specific elements create a universe and harmonize with one another. The key to reading the secret alphabet lies with the designer herself; we, the viewers, experience an encounter with a message that invites us first to decipher it and then to engage in personal introspection.


Chuhan Xiao. Pectoral piece: Vestige Skin (Model), 2025. Cupronickel, glass, mother of Pearl. 46 x 24 x 1 cm.


Jingya Yang
Raising tradition to a higher level can be considered the highest gesture of creative courage for someone who comes from a long genealogy of stone cutters. This tradition of stone cutting brings with it rules concerning structures and predefined technical procedures, classical themes, and technical challenges that are learned over years and at different levels, sometimes belonging to structures of initiation of a religious or military nature.

Tradition brings history with it as an almost physical presence, embodied in the rules of the craft and of the family. Jingya Yang takes from the technical and technological process the seeds of innovation and a new vision of the creative act. The new territory that the artist discovers is of a disturbing vastness, especially when we consider that this new creative and innovative act does not come to destroy or deny tradition and the past.

The fresh gaze and different perspective, the new point of observation discovered by the designer, make everything become more than what we have become accustomed to seeing through eyes shaped by the old school. Subtle shifts and essential adjustments of refinement awaken us to another level of the space created by the preceding context of those who came before. The discourse around the reassessment and reformulation of a classical idea, and the landing in the territory of originality, perhaps define Jingya Yang's work more than anything else.


Jingya Yang. Wearable objects, 2026. Nephrite Jade. 4.5 x 1 x 1 cm.


Romanian Jewelry Week 2026, the largest event dedicated to contemporary jewelry in Romania, takes place from 30 September to 4 October 2026 at the National Library of Romania. This year's edition brings the evolution of author jewelry on the international scene into focus and creates a meeting space for artists, designers, curators, institutions, and the public.
The week begins on Wednesday, 30 September, at 6:00 PM, at the National Library of Romania, with the official opening and an exclusive preview of the jewelry fair, which will reveal its full scale on 3 and 4 October.
 

About the author

Alexandra Bujenita is the PR manager of Romanian Jewelry Week team, Art developer of Creative team of Imbold Cultural Foundation, PR account at Hello Menthol.