Ruby Yujia Zhai

I am a jewellery designer and artist whose practice explores sensory experience through the five senses. I am interested in how jewellery can move beyond adornment and become a medium for perceiving, feeling, and activating the body. Through my work, I explore the relationships between material, sound, touch, movement, and bodily awareness, understanding jewellery as a sensory device worn close to the body.

My practice is shaped by an ongoing exploration of multisensory experience. I am particularly interested in rhythm, repetition, vibration, and resonance, and in how materials can carry subtle sensory qualities that connect making, wearing, and perception. Through silversmithing and performative processes, I explore how jewellery can be experienced not only visually, but also through touch, sound, atmosphere, and the intimate awareness of the body in space.

In Ornaments of Resonance, I transform tensioned jeweller’s saw blades into delicate resonating structures. When touched, they vibrate in a way that recalls the trembling resonance of cello strings, connecting the gestures of cutting, playing, listening, and wearing. Through engraving, I introduce fine, spiked details that resemble the sensitive trigger hairs of a Venus flytrap, or the delicacy of eyelashes, adding another tactile and visual layer to the work. Combining silver, used jeweller’s saw blades, and subtle surface interventions, this work invites a sensory encounter between body, material, sound, and space.

This body of wearable work explores sound, rhythm, tension, and tactility within the process of metalsmithing. Rather than seeing metalwork purely as a method of shaping material, I am interested in preserving the fleeting sensory experiences embedded in making: the crisp sound of a saw blade cutting through silver, the rhythmic order of tools arranged in the studio, the movement of materials under tension, and the unusual tactile quality of metal burrs created through engraving.

Across this series, I work with used saw blades, silver sheet, silver tubing, wood, and leftover fragments generated during the making process, transforming them from tools or discarded materials into brooches and rings. Worn saw blades become more than expendable equipment; they act as visual lines charged with rhythm and memory. In some works, they evoke the strings of a cello; in others, they combine with gemstones and pierced musical notes to form brooches inspired by the structure of a musical staff, an idea that emerged from observing the strong resemblance between a hammer rack and sheet music.

I am also interested in the spatial behaviour of material. Saw blades move fluidly through silver sheet and silver tubing, creating a sense of controlled movement and physical tension. In another work, bookmark-like silver sheet is combined with wood and saw blades to generate a visual rhythm reminiscent of piano keys. These forms suggest that wearable objects can hold a sense of tempo, sequence, and movement.

Alongside sound and rhythm, the series investigates touch. The metal burrs produced during engraving are usually removed and discarded, but I preserve them and reinterpret them as eyelashes or the tendrils of a Venus flytrap, creating an uncanny tactile sensation. Through this gesture, the work draws attention to material residue, fragility, and sensory ambiguity.

Overall, this series translates overlooked aspects of the making process—sound, gesture, tension, residue, and tactile sensation into visible and wearable forms. The works move between tool and ornament, sound and structure, order and sensorial experience, forming a dialogue between musicality, material memory, and the body.

Collections:Ornaments of Resonance