Peter Chang: It's Only Plastic...

by Cornelie Holzach, Clare Phillips

Peter Chang is one of the leading British jewellery artists of today. He handles his medium - plastics, mainly acrylics - as if unaware of its main application in the mass production of everyday utensils, and rather like a precious material that needs to be treated with intense care and affection before it will reveal its true character and qualities. His bracelets and brooches are striking, big, colourful and luminous, then again delicate, small and frail but always unmistakable. After a long working process his splendidly colourful objects possess a suppleness and lightness that redirect attention to their base material, those highly adaptable plastics. Chang is undoubtedly the only jewellery artist at present who devotes himself to plastics with such rigorous consistency, having discovered them to be his most congenial medium. Peter Chang's prize-winning creations can be found in many important museum collections all over the world, including Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Cooper-Hewitt Mu

168 pages, Hardcover

First published January 25, 2002