世上最昂貴鑽石項鍊背後的設計師

HONG KONG — Wallace Chan, the Hong Kong jeweler behind the creation of what has been called the world’s most expensive diamond necklace, began working with his hands when he was 8 years old.

香港——“世界上最昂貴的鑽石項鍊”背後的創作者是香港珠寶設計師陳世英(Wallace Chan)，他從八歲就開始做手藝活了。

In the 1960s his family migrated from the impoverished Fujian Province to Hong Kong, where they made money from odd jobs. The boy was put to work on repetitive tasks best done by small hands, like spooling yarn or assembling cheap decorative goods.

20世紀60年代，陳世英一家從貧困的福建省移居香港，靠打零工爲生。年幼的陳世英做的是那些只有小手才能做的重複性勞動，比如繞紗線，或組裝廉價的裝飾品之類。

“We made plastic flowers until our fingers bled,” he said, speaking in Cantonese during an interview at his studio. “We got 10 cents for every bag of plastic flowers. I still remember — and for 15 cents we could get two pineapple buns.”

“我們做塑料花，直到手指流血，”他在自己的工作室接受採訪時用粵語說道，“我們每做一袋塑料花能賺一毛錢。我還記得，有一毛五分錢就可以買兩個菠蘿包。”

Mr. Chan, 59, now works in an upstairs studio in Central Hong Kong, something of a fortress, with double electronically locked doors. A slight man with a long gray beard, wearing a plain black suit, he sat in a back room — a black cloth thrown over his desk, the shades drawn against the sunlight — and assessed bag after bag of uncut, unpolished stones, each one the size of a golf ball. “The stone tricks the eye, so I have to outsmart it,” he said, peering at a lump of topaz with a flashlight. “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.”

陳先生今年59歲，他在香港中環上層的辦公室有點像一座城堡，有兩道帶電子鎖的門。他身材瘦小，留着長長的花白鬍子，穿着一身樸素的黑色西裝，坐在辦公室裏屋，桌上鋪着黑布，色調反襯着陽光。屋子裏有一袋袋未經切割打磨的原石，每一塊都是高爾夫球大小。“石頭會欺騙眼睛，所以我得比它聰明才行，”他用手電照着一大塊託帕石，打量着它。“我可以看到它的瑕疵和角度。有些東西是我想隱藏起來的，有些東西是我想打磨出來的。我在追逐它的光。”

In September, Mr. Chan unveiled A Heritage in Bloom, called the world’s most expensive diamond necklace, at an estimated cost of $200 million. Its 11,551 diamonds, with jade pieces to create the butterflies and bats that Mr. Chan loves, total 383 carats; the centerpiece diamond alone weighs 104 carats.

九月，陳世英發布了“裕世鑽芳華”(A Heritage in Bloom)，它被稱爲世界上最昂貴的鑽石項鍊，估價2億美元。它使用玉塊及11551顆鑽石，拼出陳先生喜歡的蝴蝶與蝙蝠圖樣，重達383克拉。主鑽重達104克拉。

The project started in 2010 when Chow Tai Fook, a Hong Kong jewelry company, acquired an extremely rare, unpolished 507-carat diamond found in the Cullinan mine in South Africa. It commissioned Mr. Chan to craft the stone into a masterpiece that would become part of China’s long history of jewelry design.

這個項目始於2010年，當時香港珠寶公司周大福獲得了南非庫利南礦山出品的一塊極爲罕有、未經琢磨的鑽石原石，重達507克拉。陳先生接受委託，把這塊石頭打磨成一件中國漫長的首飾設計史上的傑作。

“When I saw it, I felt my spirit leaving my body and returning,” Mr. Chan said. “I looked at that rock for three years before I touched it.” The final product took 47,000 hours of work from 22 craftsmen.

“我一看到它，就覺得魂魄離開身體，然後又回來了，”陳先生說，“我對着這塊石頭看了三年，之後才着手。”最終成品是22位手工藝人花費47000小時的成果。

In late November, as part of the viewing period for its Dec. 1 gem auction, Christie’s Hong Kong opened an exhibition featuring 30 exceptionally technically difficult works by Mr. Chan, some of which had not been seen publicly before. The show, which didn’t include sales, coincided with the introduction of “Wallace Chan: Dream Light Water,” a 380-page book written by the jewelry expert Juliet W. de La Rochefoucauld and published by Rizzoli.

12月1日，佳士得香港將舉辦珠寶拍賣。作爲拍賣觀賞期的一部分，11月底，佳士得舉辦了一次展會，內容是陳先生的30件工藝極爲複雜的作品，其中有些從未公開展出。這次展覽不包括銷售，正好與《陳世英：夢光水》(Wallace Chan: Dream Light Water)一書同時推出，這本380頁的書由珠寶專家朱麗特·W·德·拉·羅切夫考爾德(Juliet W. de La Rochefoucauld)創作，由裏佐利出版社(Rizzoli)出版社出版。

The $280 book will be available in the United States on Jan. 28, when Mr. Chan is scheduled to hold a talk and book signing at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.

這本書售價280美元，將於1月28日在美國上市，屆時陳先生將在紐約的庫珀·休伊特，史密森尼亞設計博物館(Cooper Hewitt，Smithsonian Design Museum)做講座和簽名售書活動。

In his studio’s conference room, Mr. Chan carefully flipped through the exhibition version of the book, which is more than two feet long, and features close-ups of his detailed works.

陳先生在工作室的會議室裏小心地翻着這本書的展覽版本，它大約有兩英尺多長，其中有他精美作品的照片特寫。

His favorite pieces are playful, whimsical, even humorous. There are dangling blue earrings called Dancing Elf; a rainbow-colored lark with a diamond in its beak; and a fish with translucent fins blowing bubbles. Mr. Chan particularly loves butterflies, a motif that appears in works such as Fluttery-Painted Lady, patterned with grass and flowers, and Ragtime, with flamelike wings crafted from paper-thin sheets of mother of pearl.

他最喜歡的作品有趣、古怪，甚至很有幽默感。其中有名叫“舞蹈精靈”的藍色耳墜；彩虹色調的雲雀嘴上嵌着一顆鑽石；魚兒長着半透明的鰭，還吐着着泡泡。陳世英尤其喜歡蝴蝶，這是他作品中常常出現的主題，比如：在“鼓翼的蛺蝶”(Fluttery-Painted Lady)中，蝴蝶與花草一起出現，在“拉格泰姆”(Ragtime)中，蝴蝶火焰般的翅膀用薄如紙張的珠母片做成。

When an idea comes to him, he grabs a pencil and sketches, quickly and fluidly. During the interview, he dreamed up a horse’s head with a flowing mane, which turns into another horse’s head, that then drops down into a jeweled pendant.

他一有想法，就會抓起鉛筆迅速流暢地畫下來。在採訪中，他想象出一個鬃毛飄揚的馬頭，鬃毛又幻化作另一匹馬的頭，最後成爲一個珠寶吊墜。

Mr. Chan’s hands are small enough for him to try on his own ladies’ jewelry. He slid on a ring he called My Dreams, which is extraordinarily light and slimming to the fingers, considering that it is made of two large jeweled cubes.

陳世英的手很小，能夠試戴自己做的女式首飾。他戴上一隻叫做“我的夢”(My Dreams)的戒指，它由兩大塊珠寶立方體組成，卻極爲輕盈，在手指上顯得很纖細。

Using both hands, he picked up a large flower brooch, called Vividity, that is an explosion of hot pink and bright green. It, too, is surprisingly light for its size, the result of Mr. Chan’s technique of using titanium, which has a fraction of the density of gold.

他雙手拿起一個大大的花卉胸針，它的名字叫做“鮮明”(Vividity)，豔粉與亮綠色碰撞在一起。這款珠寶雖然大，但也出人意料地輕盈，這是因爲陳先生採用了鈦金屬工藝，所以它的密度只是金子的零頭。

His two workshops — one in Hong Kong and one in Macau, employing artisans who have worked with Mr. Chan for 15 to 30 years — produce only about a dozen pieces of year. “I spend so much time with one piece that it becomes me,” he said. “The stone is me, and I am the stone.”

陳世英的兩個工作室分別在香港和澳門，聘用了與他合作過15到30年的工匠們，一年只生產十幾件珠寶。“我在一件作品上花費很多時間，於是它就成了我的一部分，”他說，“那塊石頭就是我，我就是那塊石頭。”

Mr. Chan became interested in precious stones when, at 16, he got a job at a workshop that carved Chinese religious icons. At 17, he begged his father for 1,000 Hong Kong dollars, now about $130, and used the money to buy a carving machine and a hunk of malachite and started selling small carvings door-to-door.

陳世英從16歲起開始對寶石感興趣，當時他在一家雕刻中國宗教塑像的工作室找了份工作。17歲那年，他向父親要來1000港幣，用這些錢買了一個雕刻機和一大塊孔雀石，開始挨家挨戶地賣小雕像。

His family was pleased that he had found a steady job; but in his late 20s, he became restless.

家裏對他有份穩定工作感到很滿意；但他快到30歲的時候，開始感到焦慮。

“I wanted to be more than a workman,” he said. “I wanted to study art and watch films. I wanted to make things I loved. I wanted to make jewelry that dances with you, creations that have a story and a soul.”

“我不想只做個工人，”他說，“我想研究藝術、想看電影。我想做我喜歡的東西。我想做出能與人共舞的珠寶，想創造出擁有故事和靈魂的作品。”

So at the age of 28, against his family’s wishes, he moved to Macau, then still a Portuguese colony but already a free-wheeling gambling haven.

於是28歲的時候，他不顧家人的反對移居澳門。當時的澳門還是葡萄牙的殖民地，不過已經是個自由自在的賭博避風港了。

He became obsessed with the fact that a flaw could be reflected many times in a cut stone — creating an optical illusion similar to a double-exposure photograph. From 1985 to 1987, he developed the Wallace Cut, the technique that would bring him international fame. The Wallace Cut involves drilling a hole into the back of a multifaceted stone and then carving and etching an image, in reverse. When viewed from the front, the image will be reflected multiple times.

他開始對一件事着迷：切割之後的寶石裏，一個瑕疵可能會被反射很多次，創造出一種光學幻象，類似二次曝光攝影。從1985年到1987年，他開發出了“世英切割”(Wallace Cut)，這項技術爲他帶來了國際聲譽。這種技術包括在多面的寶石背面鑽孔，然後雕刻和蝕刻出一個反向的圖像。從正面看的時候，這個圖像就會被多次反射。

He also developed a very small, very fast drill because the technique requires that the stone be drilled, cooled in water because of the friction caused by the head of the drill, dried and drilled again multiple times — using elements of centuries-old European techniques such as intaglio printmaking and cameo carving.

“世英切割”需要鑽孔，由於鑽頭摩擦生熱，還需要在水中冷卻，乾燥後繼續鑽，如此反覆多次，他因此開發出一種又小又快的鑽頭，借鑑了幾個世紀前歐洲的技術，比如凹版印刷和寶石浮雕。

His most famous Wallace Cut was an homage to the Horae, the Greek goddesses of the seasons, in blue topaz. A German dealer took one look at Horae and told Mr. Chan that he had to take it to Europe. He showed it at the 1991 Intergem Fair and the Deutsches Edelstein Museum, both in Germany, and began to be known as a carving prodigy.

“世英切割”最著名的作品以希臘的時序女神(Horae) 命名，用藍色託帕石製成。一個德國商人只看了一眼這件“時序女神”，就告訴陳先生，他一定要把它帶到歐洲去。後來，陳先生在德國的1991年Intergem博覽會與德意志伊德爾斯泰因博物館(Deutsches Edelstein Museum)展出了這件作品。

One of Mr. Chan’s largest and most unusual commissions came in the late ’90s, when a Taiwanese temple asked him to make a three-foot-high great stupa of gold, crystal and ruby to house a relic believed to be Buddha’s tooth. Mr. Chan worked for months to figure out how to encase the tooth in concentric crystal globes; the project, completed in 2001, took two years in all.

陳先生最大的、也是最特別的委約作品之一是在90年代末期，一個臺灣寺院請他製作一尊三英尺高，鑲嵌水晶和紅寶石的金舍利塔，用來盛放佛牙聖物。陳世英研究了好幾個月，纔想出如何在構成同心圓的水晶球中放入佛牙；這個項目在2001年完工，歷時兩年。

Fran漀椀猀 Curiel, chairman of Christie’s Asia-Pacific, in an email called Mr. Chan a “Renaissance man in the best sense of the world — a scientist, designer, sculpture; but my best description of him is as a visionary.

佳士得亞太地區主席高逸龍(Fran漀椀猀 Curiel)在電子郵件中稱陳先生是“一位典型的文藝復興式人物——科學家、設計師、雕塑家；但對他最好的描述一個有遠見的人”。

“He has the curiosity, courage and, above all, the talents to push boundaries, artistically and geographically,” Mr. Curiel continued. “He is one of the first Chinese jewelry artists to make his name in the international arena.”

“他有好奇心，有勇氣，最重要的是，還有突破邊界的才華，無論是藝術的邊界還是地理上的邊界，”高逸龍說，“他是首批享譽國際的中國珠寶藝術家之一。”

Mr. Chan finally broke through a glass ceiling in the jewelry world when, in 2012, he became the first Asian designer to be invited to exhibit at the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris, the world’s premiere haute jewelry exhibition.

陳世英最終打破了珠寶世界中的玻璃天花板，2012年，他成了第一個受邀參展巴黎古董雙年展(Biennale des Antiquaires)的亞洲設計師，這是世界頂尖的高端珠寶展覽。

“The Path to Enlightenment — Art and Zen” had pieces that were entirely different from those by European designers: a swirling Chinese dragon, a jade-green cricket, a translucent swan and fighting scorpions. The Great Wall, Mr. Chan’s necklace of antique Chinese imperial jadeite and diamond-encrusted maple leaves, sold for 56 million euros, or $59.6 million.

“啓蒙之路：藝術與禪”(The Path to Enlightenment — Art and Zen)的展品與歐洲設計師們的珠寶內容截然不同：盤旋的中國龍、翡翠綠的蟋蟀、半透明的天鵝和打鬥的蠍子。陳先生的“長城”(The Great Wall)是一款翡翠項鍊，帶有鑽石鑲嵌的楓葉，售價5600萬歐元，或約合5960萬美元。

Mr. Chan is said to sell works only to clients he likes — a practice he neither confirmed or denied.

據說陳先生只把作品賣給自己喜歡的客戶——這件事他既不承認也不否認。

“Let’s just say I don’t choose business just because of money,” he said. “Each work is from my heart, my hands. I suffer through each one. The buyer needs to understand that it is from my heart — that they are taking my child.”

“這麼說吧，我不會只爲了錢而交易，”他說，“每件作品都是我用心、用雙手做成的。每一件都讓我付出心血。買家要理解它們發自我的心靈——他們帶走的是我的孩子。”

“If someone just says, ‘I have money, I want it,’ and they don’t understand, then I don’t want to give it to them.”

“如果有人說，‘我有錢，我想要’，那麼他們就沒有理解，我也不想把作品賣給這樣的人。”

Both Mr. Chan and his staff are extremely protective of customers, saying all sales are confidential. And auction reports on his pieces just note “private buyer.”

陳先生和員工都極爲保護客戶，說所有交易均要保密，作品的拍賣報告上只寫着“私人買家”。

Mr. Chan lives simply. He wears no jewelry, drinks endless cups of plain Chinese tea and still resides in a quiet corner of Macau.

陳先生的生活很簡譜。他不戴珠寶，一杯又一杯地喝着普通的中國茶，他依然住在澳門一個安靜的角落。

He doesn’t particularly want to discuss his eye-popping price tags or prominent clients.

他不太想談那些讓人瞠目結舌的價格，或是那些顯赫的客戶。

“I want to leave a legacy,” he said. “Chinese jewelry has a history of 6,000 years, and I want to be part of it.”

“我想留下一份遺產，”他說，“中國的珠寶有6000年曆史，我希望成爲其中的一部分。”