As a subfield of contemporary jewellery, narrative jewellery has evolved over several decades, attracting growing attention from artists and scholars alike. Veteran jewellery artist Jack Cunningham defines narrative jewellery as “a wearable object that contains a commentary or message which the maker, by means of visual representation, has the overt intention to communicate to an audience through the intervention of the wearer.” His work also initiated the exploration of the Maker-Wearer-Viewer relationship, through which contemporary jewellery has gradually become a new medium for expressing identity and examining the connections between individuals, society, and history. Can jewellery serve as a vessel for human memory? Can individuals find a sense of well-being in the fragmented recollections crystallized within jewellery? Can materials themselves convey emotion? These questions lie at the heart of jewellery artist Wanya Wu’s creative practice. As a narrative jewellery artist and scholar with a cross-cultural background, Wu explores the cultural intersections and divergences between East and West, as well as the dynamic tensions between industrial and handcrafted production, innovation and tradition, speed and slowness.
The Gummy Bear Brooches Collection by Wanyan Wu was exhibited at the Cluster Contemporary Fair 2024. With its simple yet playful forms, the collection captivated many viewers. Wu transforms fleeting sensations of sweetness and joy into wearable, enduring objects. Each Haribo Gummy Bear, crafted in fine high-temperature enamel, gleams with a tempting glass-like luster. They are neatly arranged and set within small silver boxes, forming brooches that evoke the nostalgic charm of a candy tin. When the box is opened, memories stir: the laughter of childhood moments spent sharing sweets, the warmth of festive gatherings, or merely the indulgent texture of biting into a soft gummy bear. Wu captures these intimate fragments within material form, turning jewellery into a vessel that bridges memory and emotion.
After earning her Master’s degree from the Birmingham School of Jewellery, Wu continues developing the Candy Box project during her time as an artist-in-residence at the same institution. Wu described the candy box as her sanctuary. As a child, whenever she felt sad, she would hide inside her grandmother’s snack cabinet, take a piece of candy from her cherished candy box, and savor it as a form of quiet emotional healing. This ritual has since become a deeply personal and sensorial memory that continues to inform her artistic expression.
In a postmodern context, images no longer serve merely decorative or symbolic purposes; they have become vessels of cultural memory and emotion. Through the familiar motif of Haribo candies, Wu constructs an intangible yet shared spiritual space where memories and experiences are exchanged with the audience. The image of “candy,” as a cross-cultural visual symbol, is not simply reproduced but translated through material, craftsmanship, and form: transforming imagery into something tangible, something that can be touched and felt as memory. Within this space, memories associated with candy float, reconstruct, and regenerate. The boundaries between past and present, collective and personal, memory and history, begin to blur and collide. Wu’s work also engages with the concept of Pick ‘N’ Mix. She invites viewers to select from different shapes of candy boxes, varieties of candies, and modes of wearing the jewellery, allowing each participant to assemble a unique, personalized piece.
The multicolored, hand-enameled candies are designed to be touched and worn, encouraging the viewer to embody memory through sensory experience. By engaging physically and emotionally, the audience is invited to revisit past feelings and, within Wu’s imagined “candy utopia,” to slow down, savor joyful nostalgia, and cultivate a sense of emotional well-being.
As an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural jewellery artist, Wu has also been deeply engaged in exploring the expressive potential of transparent materials. Her inquiry begins with a simple yet poetic question: How can one create a “candy” that feels even more like candy, using materials other than sugar itself? Over time, she has experimented with resin, enamel, and glass. In her early works, resin was the sole medium. By using CAD modeling and 3D printing, Wu produced resin candies that were later polished and dyed through multiple processes, allowing her to create hundreds of pieces in a short time. Yet these industrially fabricated candies conveyed a sense of mechanical detachment: a coolness that lacked the warmth of handcraft. This realization sparked a new idea: What if she combined silver bases shaped like candies with translucent enamel to make a different kind of “sweet”? With the guidance and technical support of enamel artist Jane Moore, Wu mastered various enameling techniques, from plique-à-jour to monochrome enamel. Through repeated trials and failures, she discovered the principles of enameling on irregular surfaces, learning to precisely control temperature and timing. One by one, the enameled gummy bears emerged from the kiln. Wu describes the kiln as a “magical space,” fascinated by the transformation of powdered enamel, like grains of sugar, into a molten, adhesive liquid. The unpredictability of enamel’s final color continues to captivate her. Enamel, after all, is glass fused onto metal. But what happens if the metal is removed? Would the candy appear even more real? Driven by this curiosity, Wu returned to China to study traditional lampworking under a master artisan recognized as an Intangible Cultural Heritage inheritor. In glass, she found a new expressive medium. Under high heat, glass becomes soft, fluid, and infinitely malleable, like molten sugar. In Wu’s hands, each piece of glass is meticulously shaped into radiant candy, imbued with the artist’s emotions and her quiet wishes for joy. As the heat fades, the glass hardens and becomes fragile, creating a striking contrast, mirroring the essence of sweet memories themselves: fleeting, transparent, and yet forever imprinted in time.
Wu’s latest works: Ring Gummies Necklace, Sour Sugar, reveal a new stage in her material exploration. In these pieces, she combines four transparent media: resin, glass, enamel, and plastic, all together to create a visual feast centered on the themes of candy and packaging. These materials refract and capture light, giving the works a layered sense of temporality and memory. The soft yet fragile emotions embedded within the crystalline “candy state” of glass and enamel lend the pieces a tactile vulnerability. Repurposing Haribo candy wrappers and individually sealing each “candy” through encapsulation techniques, Wu transforms transparency from a mere visual effect into a metaphor for emotion and narrative: it both reveals and protects, reflecting the delicate equilibrium between fragility and joy. Resin, used as the primary material for the necklace, lightens its overall weight; pearls, strung like colorful jelly beans, interweave through the ring gummy-shaped elements, producing a play of gloss and translucence. Wu’s practice dissolves the boundaries between industrial fabrication and handcrafted artistry. In an age defined by speed, she manages to balance both, maintaining the meditative rhythm of handcraft while embracing the efficiency of industrial processes. Precious and ordinary materials coexist naturally in her work, achieving a poised harmony. Through her playful manipulation of transparent media, Wu affirms a powerful proposition: material can express emotion. With simple forms and the sweet imagery of candy, she bridges Eastern and Western cultural contexts, exploring the relationship between childhood memory and jewellery. Her ongoing Candy Box project draws from both anthropological and psychological perspectives, using narrative jewellery as a medium through which people can rediscover identity, belonging, and emotional healing.
Wanyan Wu’s artistic practice follows the threads of memory and emotion, transforming nostalgia into a gentle visual language. Using candy as a symbol, she employs transparent materials and vivid colors to translate the sweetness of childhood into wearable forms of emotion. Her works are both light and profound, exploring the delicate balance between joy and fragility, between the past and the present. In this sense, Wu redefines narrative jewellery: it is no longer a fixed storytelling medium but rather an archaeology of the senses, a means of tracing forgotten emotions through material. Her practice offers an alternative vision within contemporary design: a slower, embodied way of experiencing the world, one that forges deeper connections among craft, memory, and emotional time. Ultimately, her jewellery becomes a vessel for well-being and the passage of time itself.