Introduction to The Estate Collection: Our Founder’s Thoughts
A grandmother’s story
When I first started working with jade so many years ago, people would ask me why I chose a gem that “only Chinese grandmothers would wear”. And I often respond, only half-jokingly, that it was jade that chose me. Or rather, my ancestors chose it for me, long before I was born. My grandfather named me for it, and my great-grandmothers’ passed on their beliefs that jade would provide strength through times we thought of as unbearable. These were stories my soul yearned to tell, and I was restless if I did not honour that call.
And thus, today, Choo Yilin embarks on a new chapter, telling important stories through antiques and jade, going beyond our ancestors’ stories, encompassing stories across cultures and time. I hope you enjoy journeying with us.
In this new chapter, the brand extends its homage to the past beyond jade, working with, reinterpreting and reimagining old jewels, both from the West and the East, that have been around for hundreds, and even thousands of years.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
Some of my earliest memories were of me climbing into my great-grandmothers’ laps, playing with their cool jade bangles, a stark contrast to their warm, papery skin. They wore their jade bangles every single day of their lives, believing it to be an emblem of safety and protection.
Image: Yilin with her great-grandmother
My great-grandmothers, like so many women before them, made treacherous weeks-long voyages on plagued and pest-ridden ships in search of a safer life. They married, raised children, and mourned and buried loved ones. And amidst all of this, they found joy and equanimity in everyday moments amidst the backdrop of the decline of the Qing Dynasty, two World Wars, riots and poverty.
I did not meet one of my great-grandmothers, as she passed away in 1959, decades before I was born. But, I feel her presence and love through stories my father tells about her. Just before she passed, she gifted her grandson, my father, some antique coins, which he nurtured into a life-long hobby. His love of antique coins and stamps arose from a desire to know the world outside of the tiny island he called home. In 1950s colonial Singapore, there were few avenues to learn about culture and history and geography; these precious coins and stamps allowed him glimpses into worlds that seemed so foreign to his own. Whilst poring over the two-inch squares and circles, he vowed to explore these worlds one day.
In an unplanned parallel, my work with jade and my restlessness to connect more deeply with my own heritage brought me to museums, auction houses, and antique dealers all over the world. A thought struck me, as I was gingerly navigating a snow-covered street in midtown Manhattan one day, a 24-hour flight away from my family’s tropical home in Singapore, that my great grandmothers would have loved that I took these old, old memories and stories of them and somehow parlayed it into my life’s work. That, like my father, these antique pieces I held in my hands, hundreds of years old, carried the keys to worlds past and present that I ached to unlock and to understand.
These trips were magical. I saw for the first time indescribable jewels of historical importance that I had previously only seen in coffee table books or on the big screen.
Image: New York City
I saw quieter pieces that loudly demanded to be more closely examined with a jeweller’s loupe. Often, these were pieces that utilised techniques no longer practised by modern jewellers. Their quiet allure stirred a resolve in me to bring them home, to tell their stories.
I fell hopelessly in love with the Art Deco vanity cases featuring exquisite pieces of carved jadeite, reinforcing my certainty that it was absolutely not true that “jade is worn only by Chinese grandmothers”. That jade can be, is, as modern and relevant in the 21st Century as it was in imperial China, and in 1920s Europe and the USA. I listened, rapt, that these vanity cases were a reflection of a pivotal time for women in history. A reminder that truly, we stand on the shoulders of generations of women who had come before us.
This photo does not belong to Choo Yilin. Please contact us so that we can include credit.
But, the ones that moved me the most were the antique pieces that bore witness to personal, intimate stories of humanity. There was a man, who before passing, arranged for his wife to be posthumously gifted with a piece of jewellery from her favourite jeweller on their wedding anniversary. A woman who refused to remove her necklace pendant, gifted to her by her mother, believing that her mother’s love had imbued in it a comforting power of protection. I was inexplicably charmed when I learnt that a Victorian pocket watch, which had to be sold off in difficult times, was serendipitously purchased back by a grandson, identified thanks to the careful engraving still visible after decades.
These stories reminded me of my great-grandmothers, with their gifts of antique coins and their beliefs of the power of jade bangles. I later learnt that one of them when her husband passed abruptly, sold all her gold jewellery, carefully amassed through gifts from her wedding and anniversaries, using the money to start a small business, ensuring that her children could be fed and kept in school.
And, I, instead of reclaiming these lost family heirlooms, choose to create them instead.
The Estate Collection: our love letter to the past
For the first time in our history, we will be hosting an exhibition in the form of a digital gallery — a celebration of the long legacy of diamond cutting, intricate filigree, and milgrain that has informed hundreds of years of fine jewellery alchemy.
We have procured ten estate items from across the globe - from Malacca to Java, from New York City to London. These are pieces that have lived through Queen Victoria’s England in the 1880s to Colonial South East Asia in the 1950s.
These pieces, each one-of-a-kind, bear similarities to the Choo Yilin aesthetic that we have so carefully honed over the last decade - a reminder that we stand on the shoulders of giants that have come before us.
And in true Choo Yilin style, we have woven them with Type A jadeite, pearls and diamonds so that each of these pieces holds our ancestors’ past, our present, and hopefully our children’s future.
We would love to take you on a virtual journey through time to tour some of these incredibly special pieces and hope they will move you the way they have moved us.
The gallery will be available for viewing online from 9th November 2023.