Local resident behind world’s most expensive diamond necklace

Hong Kong jeweler Wallace Chan is the man behind some of the SARs’ most extravagant pieces of jewelry. His two workshops – one in Macau and one in Hong Kong – employ veteran artisans who have worked with him for 15 to 30 years and churn out around a dozen pieces annually.
Chan may be best known for pioneering the “Wallace Cut”, a technique that creates a brilliant optical illusion in a stone, allowing an image to be reflected multiple times. In 1987, the technique brought Chan international recognition as a master jeweler.
In September 2015, Wallace Chan unveiled what is considered to be the world’s most expensive diamond necklace. The piece is titled “A Heritage in Bloom” and contains 11,551 diamonds, as well as numerous jade pieces in the shape of butterflies and bats.
Chan had been commissioned to craft the necklace by Hong Kong jewelry company Chow Tai Fook, which found the rare diamond in a South African mine.
“I spend so much time with one piece that it becomes me,” he told the New York Times. “The stone is me, and I am the stone.”
“The stone tricks the eye, so I have to outsmart it,” he added. “I can see its flaws and angles. There are elements I want to hide and elements I want to bring out. I am chasing its light.”
An exhibition at Christie’s in Hong Kong opened last month featuring 30 pieces of Chan’s work, some of which had never been revealed to the public.
In an interview with the New York Times, Chan said that he was born in Fujian Province, but moved to Hong Kong with his family in the 1960s. His interest in precious stones began after he secured a job at a workshop that carved Chinese religious icons. A year later, at the age of 17, Chan bought his first carving machine and a chunk of malachite.
In his late 20s, Chan expressed a desire to study art and to make jewelry not as a craftsman, but as an artist. Against his family’s wishes, he moved to Macau.
Chan now works in a walk-up studio in Central Hong Kong but, according to the NYT, still resides in Macau. Staff reporter