Some people realise fairly early that they are not made for office life.
Yen had that revelation during her final year at university. She had always been creative, had an interest in minerals, insects and handicrafts, and eventually came to the rather sensible conclusion that if she did not do something about it, she might graduate straight into exactly the kind of working life she did not want.
So, towards the end of 2018, she took the leap and started turning those interests into her work.
Thousands of tiny knots
The heart of much of Yen's jewellery is micro macramé.
Macramé itself is an old idea: instead of weaving or knitting, a structure is built from knots. Micro macramé takes that principle down to jewellery scale, using fine cord and a frankly unreasonable number of tiny knots.
I have never attempted to count them. I suspect doing so would remove some of the magic.
Yen builds the knotwork around stones such as rose quartz, labradorite, lapis lazuli, jasper and many others. The stone is not simply attached to a finished necklace; the cords grow around it and become its setting.
That means the jewellery develops gradually from the centre outwards.
First the stones are secured. Then the surrounding structure starts to appear.
More knots, more branches, more decisions.
Until eventually the tangle of cords becomes something that looks suspiciously as though somebody planned it from the beginning.
Stones, meanings and curiosity
Yen also knows her stones.
She is interested in their mineralogical side – what they are, how they form and how to recognise them – but also in the symbolic and spiritual meanings people have associated with minerals.
I actually like that combination. A stone can be an interesting geological object without preventing humans from spending a few thousand years attaching stories to it.
For the jewellery, however, there is another consideration which is considerably less philosophical: the stone has to work with the design.
Its shape, colour and pattern influence the cords around it, so a particularly interesting mineral can easily become the starting point for the whole piece.
And then there are the insects
I like Yen's micro macramé work very much.
But the things that really caught me were the bugs.
Yen makes insects using bead embroidery: moths, beetles, spiders and other small creatures assembled from beads, sequins, stones, thread and whatever else the design happens to require.
The shimmering surfaces work absurdly well for insects. Real beetles and moths are often far more colourful and iridescent than we remember them being, so the beads and sequins somehow make the artificial creatures look more alive rather than less.
They are decorative, slightly strange and impossible to overlook.
Which is probably why I like them.
One person, rather a lot of jobs
Like several of the artists we work with, Yen does considerably more than the part that eventually appears in photographs.
She develops the designs, selects the stones and materials, prototypes new pieces, makes the jewellery, prepares the packaging and presents her work to customers herself.
That is one aspect of small creative businesses that easily disappears behind the finished object.
We see the necklace.
Behind it may be hours of knotting, sourcing materials, photographing finished work, answering messages, calculating prices, packing orders and standing behind a table at a craft market explaining for the forty-seventh time that yes, every single one of those knots really was made by hand.
Yen's work
What connects the micro macramé and the embroidered insects is probably Yen's fascination with detail.
Neither technique makes much sense if your preferred approach to work is “good enough, nobody will notice”.
People notice.
They notice the tiny knots surrounding a stone, the carefully placed beads on the wing of a moth and the little irregularities that tell you somebody was actually sitting there making the object.
That is exactly why Yen belongs in our People & Craft section.
If you would like to know whether we currently have any of her work available, you can contact us.