From Diamond to Clay: Yici Zhao’s Journey from Light to Earth

How do two hands—once trained to tame dazzling diamonds—turn instead to the gentle resistance of clay?

This October, ceramic jewelry and lifestyle brand Yici opened a new boutique at Beijing SKP, marking both a milestone and a new chapter for its founder, Yici Zhao. Formerly known for her haute jewelry creations, Zhao has spent the last few years crafting a wholly different world—one shaped not by sparkle, but by stillness. Jingzhi Chronicle sat down with Zhao to discuss her transformation, and how she’s using clay to reframe not only design, but our relationship to objects, rituals, and meaning.

From the End of Light to the Beginning of Earth

A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Zhao began her career in high jewelry, known for mastering intricate techniques like mise à jour. Her pieces—Flamenco, Frou Frou, Ni Shang Dance—garnered attention at international auctions, each shaped by a singular goal: to “calculate every cut so that light moves through the gem like flowing water.”

But the more she pursued light, the more she yearned for weight, texture, and warmth—for a material that spoke to the hands and heart, not just the eyes. “Jewelry is dazzling and outward-facing, but at times it feels emotionally cold,” she reflected. “I began to miss a quieter, softer, more tactile medium.” That medium, for her, was ceramics.

From New York to Jingdezhen, Zhao describes her shift as a natural arc—from chasing light to returning to earth. “The first time I plunged my hands into clay and felt its wet resistance, I felt grounded. Clay isn’t something you design—it grows in your palm.” That sense of grounding was the seed of Yici.

The name itself is a subtle wordplay: in Mandarin, the character for ceramic (瓷) is pronounced identically to her given name (慈)—a poetic coincidence that became symbolic of her transformation.

Continuity in Contrast: From Jewelry to Ceramics

To Zhao, ceramics are not a departure from her jewelry work but an evolution—another body through which the same aesthetic values speak. Her experience in high jewelry shaped how she thinks about structure, proportion, and the human body.

Take her “Embrace” series, inspired by a line from a song: “The evening breeze kisses the lotus leaves / Let me fall drunk by the pond.” Crafted in high-fired porcelain, the earrings resemble soft ripples encircling the ear, evoking a gentle embrace. Yet despite their delicate appearance, they are engineered with the rigor of fine jewelry—balanced weight, anatomical fit, and ergonomic precision. “I bring the structural thinking of jewelry into ceramics,” Zhao said. “It turns clay from a decorative object into something that physically lives with the body.”

Letting Go of Control, Embracing the Unknown

Despite the philosophical continuity, ceramics demanded that Zhao unlearn much of what high jewelry had taught her.

Jewelry is about control—of light paths, gemstone clarity, microscopic tolerances. Ceramics, by contrast, are about release. “It’s not fully yours,” she explained. “Clay needs to dance with time, temperature, and accident. You guide, but you don’t command.”

“In jewelry, even a one-millimeter deviation is unacceptable,” Zhao admitted. Yet in Jingdezhen, the first lesson she learned was the opposite: do not force, do not predefine, do not rush. While developing her ideal “Chinese red” glaze, she went through more than twenty failed attempts. Then, in one firing—perhaps due to a minute shift in mineral proportions—fine golden flecks appeared on the vessel’s surface, resembling sunlight brushing across vermilion palace walls.

“In that moment, I realized that what seemed uncontrollable was not risk, but a long-lost sense of freedom.”

This openness to uncertainty became Yici’s defining trait. In her “Enso” series, glazes flow unpredictably across the ceramic surface. The resulting asymmetry isn’t a flaw, but an intentional reflection of life’s imperfection. “Perfect circles are for machines,” she said. “We breathe. So should our objects.”

Objects with Spirit, Vessels for Emotion

“We have a core content series called Objects and People,” Zhao noted. Through long-term dialogue with collectors, she came to realize that a work truly enters its second life only after it leaves the creator’s hands.

“A good work is not completed by its maker,” she said. “It is given a soul by the user through everyday life.”

She shared several stories: someone wearing a red Embrace piece before a high-pressure career milestone, as a reminder to move forward with resolve; another choosing earrings from the Timeless series when meeting a close friend who had just made a pivotal life decision.

“These deeply personal moments become part of the brand’s narrative,” Zhao reflected, “allowing Yici’s works to continue growing within real lives.”

A Chinese Material, A Global Dialogue

In English, ceramics are called china. The word itself embeds a cultural association with China, endowing the material with a strong and unmistakable identity. In a market increasingly saturated with creations inspired by Chinese tradition, this clarity offers both recognition and challenge: how can Yici avoid being reduced to surface-level imagery, and instead allow audiences to perceive its underlying mindset, and the atmosphere that naturally emerges from it?

She points to two examples. First: the power of liubai—negative space. “In Chinese aesthetics, we believe white space is black space. We don’t try to fill every corner. We invite the user’s imagination.” Her designs leave room—literally and emotionally—for interpretation.

She applies a similar philosophy to her understanding of wholeness. As seen in the Enso series, Yici’s notion of completion moves beyond geometric closure toward a spiritual sense of sufficiency. A form may be asymmetrical, open, or even fragmented, yet still complete within cycles of time and energy.

“Clay mixed with water, pinewood as fuel, fire as transformation, glaze as metal—this is already a circulation of the five elements, a living sense of completeness.”

From Diamonds to Clay: A Journey of Softness

Looking back, Zhao describes her path as “a journey from starlight to soil.” She once spent her days calculating the refraction of diamonds; now, she listens to the rhythm of fire, water, and hands.

This return to earth is not a rejection of light, but a search for something deeper—something that shines without glittering, that feels rather than blinds.