Fei Liu

Fei Liu was born in China but studied and trained in the UK. He makes it a personal mission to create engagement rings that are studies in finding harmony and unity between the East and West. When I talked to F about our meeting I described to him how Fei Liu manages to marry the Chinese tradition of attention to exquisite detail and precision with the British flavour of contemporary design and strong metal lines to produce an engagement ring of virtuoso craftsmanship.

The fixation on detail offers a story and a treasure chest of secret, touching features to the couple who commissions an engagement ring from this designer. From any angle the rings crafted by Fei Liu emanate a quiet and confident inner beauty. Fei showed me how he incorporates small details to the back of the stone settings in his rings to give the wearer a hidden touch that only the couple knows about.

Fei Liu pointed out that for him the use of Asian motifs would be too obvious a way to manifest his native culture. Instead, his commissions embody a very subtle interplay of two traditions that reveals the depth of an artist straddling two cultures.

I was entranced by an example of one of Fei Liu’s engagement ring concepts that he calls Aurora after the Aurora Borealis. F and I have always been attracted to the challenge that designers face when they undertake to capture transient natural phenomena in a permanent piece of precious metal and stone. The clash between the ephemeral and the eternal is a concept that seems to ignite the passion of Fei Liu.

In this engagement ring, the swirling movement of lights in the sky are rendered in the sweeping curves of the sculpted metal band. The shimmering starry sky that provides the stage for the show of the Northern Lights has been concentrated into the body of the glittering diamond that crowns this heavenly masterpiece.