FINE LINES WORDS: SAM DAVIES
LACE founder Jenny Wu on using 3D printing to produce fine jewellery.
I
n the corridors of Art Basel Miami, visitors are rushing to see a bold piece they’ve never seen before, wanting to know more about it, wanting to touch it, maybe even wanting to buy it. Taken aback by the interest, Jenny Wu returned to her Oyler Wu Collaborative architecture design studio with the idea to start a new business. Seven years on, her LACE jewellery brand has launched a wedding collection, a men’s line, and recently expanded into Europe. Underpinning all that success is 3D printing technology. It was the autumn of 2014 when Wu’s first LACE line of jewellery was launched, just a year after she first used 3D printing to make a fashion statement while speaking publicly and attending events. Among the first products on sale were the Tangens necklace, which features interlocking elements and was initially produced with Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) technology, and the Papilio ring, a design inspired by the movement of a butterfly wing that has been additvely manufactured in nylon and metal materials, while also cast in sterling silver. Each of these designs began with a sketch, before moving into an extensive prototyping phase that first assessed form and fit and later considered the best material for production. The process used for production, though, has been subject to much deliberation over the years, for not every step of Wu’s journey with LACE has been a walk in the park. “For the first few years, there was definitely a lot of learning,” she tells TCT. Case in point is the Tangens necklace, one of LACE’s flagship products and the kind of piece that was drawing the attention of so many in Miami. While the design remains much the same as it did back in 2014, the production method needed changing. “Back then, it was mostly FDM and to print a lot of my jewellery was challenging, there was a lot of limitations for the kind of work I wanted to do and how it might translate to 3D printing,” Wu says. “With the support systems, FDM was impossible,
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so now I mostly work with SLS [Selective Laser Sintering], which, being powderbased, obviously makes it more feasible to do interlocking pieces, [for example].” Finding the right process to produce this piece was paramount for Wu since she had insisted on the necklace being completely 3D printed, including the latch, with zero assembly. Since the necklace was a big and bold piece, it needed to be flexible and durable, but not so hard that it would hurt upon contact with the skin.
4 RIGHT:
LACE'S ALLEGRO CUFF RING IN 18K PLATED ROSE GOLD
6 BELOW:
LACE'S 3D PRINTED TANGENS NECKLACE
“Figuring out how to print the necklace was probably one of the most challenging things,” she recalls. “Just the latch itself, I probably printed that latch 50 times because when it’s too tight, the customer will yank on it and the whole thing will pull off, and then if it’s too loose, someone knocks you and it falls off, and so, in the end, we figured out using SLS with a TPU was the best method, but even within that, looking at the tolerance of each intricate [interlocking] piece and trying to make sure they move but don’t collide, that was a lot of work.” A lot of effort, as well, has gone into finding the right material to use for pieces, especially as the additive manufacturing industry has made great strides in expanding users’ options in that regard over the years. Some materials have been too soft and easily breakable, others too stiff for the specific application. It has led Wu to look beyond polymers and closer at what metal 3D printing can offer, resulting in many new designs that polymer AM couldn’t address, such as the Mobius ring, while offering metal versions of several existing designs that had previously been released as plastic pieces, like the Papilio ring. Per Wu, most of what LACE now offers is done in precious metals and steels, largely for reasons around durability and wearability – considering how a customer might bang their ring on a table or not feel when their earrings have fallen out because they’re too lightweight – but also because, “I was always interested in elevating 3D printed jewellery into a fine jewellery brand and not a fashion jewellery brand.”
“I was always interested in elevating 3D printed jewellery into fine jewellery.”
