We are an AAPI-owned (Asian Americans Pacific Islanders-owned) contemporary jewelry brand creating love speech in Asian calligraphy. We specialize in 18K gold jewelry that are ethical and sustainable. Our unique designs help you express antiracism, and a portion of each sale is donated to support Asian communities. We also offer customized jewelry with high-end quality. Luxury with a difference!
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, violence against Asian communities has soared in the United States. We invite you to take a stand and wear your protest statement against racism.
Our company Founder, Aïda Yuen Wong, is an art historian, calligraphy practitioner, and Asian American jewelry designer. She was born in Hong Kong. Besides Boston where she currently resides, Aïda has lived in Beijing, New York, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo and Toronto. She has published extensively on a variety of subjects in Asian art, including calligraphy and fashion history. Aïda received her BA in French and Visual Arts at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) and PhD in Asian Art History at Columbia University. She holds an endowed Chair Professorship in Fine Arts and East Asian Studies at Brandeis University, U.S.A.
2022, our founding year, marks the 140th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 and the 40th anniversary of the murder of Vincent Chin. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first immigration law in the United States that explicitly discriminated against a specific ethnic group. Executive Order 9066 put 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps during World War II. Vincent Chin, a young Chinese American in Detroit, was murdered by two racists who received infamously light sentences and less than $4,000 in fines. Remembering these dark episodes unite our resolve to fight against racism.
References:
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-signs-executive-order-9066
https://www.history.com/news/vincent-chin-murder-asian-american-rights
Lew-Williams, Beth. The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2021.
Pyun, Kyunghee and Aida Yuen Wong, eds. Fashion, Identity, and Power in Modern Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Reeves, Richard. Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015.
Wong, Aida Yuen Wong. The Other Kang Youwei: Calligrapher, Art Activist, and Aesthetic Reformer in Modern China. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
-----. Gender and Ideology in Modern East Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012.
Zia, Helen. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Stratus and Giroux, 2000.