Ceramic Artist Leo Wong Brings Eternal Peonies to Hong Kong

This article is brought to you by Van Cleef & Arpels.

As you walk past the Van Cleef & Arpels boutiques on either Chater Road or Canton Road, take a moment to carefully look at the window displays. Together with pieces from high jewellery collections of this renowned Maison, you will also notice some exquisite porcelain peonies in various shades of pink; so carefully created that is only under close scrutiny that you realise they are not real flowers. Each bloom is remarkable for the way in which it seems to capture the ephemerality of Nature’s delicacy and detail, each petal transforming as the light changes throughout the day, looking fresher, as if just starting to bloom, or a little more mature, as if living their greatest glory before starting to wilt.

This effect is achieved by firing the peonies without using any glaze, keeping them matte and the porcelain reactive to the light. They are the work of Hong Kong porcelain artist Leo Wong, who specialises in crafting the most delicate and naturalistic looking flowers. Wong cites inspirations that span from Tang Dynasty (618–907) pigmented clay methods to Van Cleef & Arpels’ most iconic form of savoir-faire, the Mystery Set. Introduced by Van Cleef & Arpels in 1933 the patented technique allows for precious stones to be set into gold rails, so as to render the metal underneath invisible.

Wong, born in 1981, speaks with great passion about his work, quoting from poetry written in the Song Dynasty (960–1279) — he also writes poetry, he says — and from classical Chinese literature. His passion for plants and flowers, as well as his solid botanical knowledge, comes from first studying geography at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a subsequent career as a certified arborist and landscape designer, who for more than 20 years has specialised in vegetation management.

His foray into ceramics started quite casually, in 2014, through a pottery class he attended with his wife on Saturdays, run by Hong Kong ceramicist Ho Tai-kwan in Fo Tan. Getting to know clay became a passion, and then a full blown career.

The flowers that are displayed at Van Cleef & Arpels are made using semi-translucent Japanese porcelain that Wong imported for this project. He patiently mixed it with red or pink pigments so that the clay itself is coloured, without any need to add a coloured slip or glaze on the surface. “It is a very traditional Tang mixing technique that was used with stoneware, not porcelain,” he says. “But I find it is what gives this silky, very naturalistic finish. I use it both for the pink petals, and the yellow pistils. To make a peony, from start to finish, it takes about three to four hours. Then I do a single firing with my home kiln, at 1300 degrees Celsius.”

For the Van Cleef & Arpels’ project, he has also decided to look closely at the way the Maison stylises its pieces, and to do away with more detailed renderings of the leaves, or the tiny ribs that occur in the peonies’ petals. He works entirely by hand, without the use of plaster moulds or slip casting, pinching and flattening the small pieces of clay until they assume the shape of a life-like petal.

Drawing inspiration from Van Cleef & Arpels’ Mystery Set, Wong has also modified the way in which he attaches the petals to their base, and made it more obscure as an homage to the French Maison’s technical innovation. “Both Van Cleef & Arpels and I work from the earth,” he says. “I work with clay, and they work with precious stones. We both draw significant inspiration from the same place; Nature and its constant metamorphoses. For this specific set of a hundred peonies, I have drawn from the Maison’s character so that they resonate with its DNA. Each flower has its own vitality and form, its own grace and hidden depth that resonates with the jewellery they are displayed alongside.”

Wong will also be the only artist from Hong Kong invited to take part in this year’s Homo Faber Biennial in Venice, in the exhibition Journey of Life, which highlights the work of great living artisans in 50 countries. “For the Homo Faber show I am presenting a sculptural piece which depicts a branch of five peonies, inspired by Japanese woodblock printer Katsuhika Hokusai’s ‘Peonies and Butterfly’,” he says, referring to an 1834 artwork. In his sculpture, Wong has set five porcelain peonies on a wooden branch. The fifth peony was added after Wong’s close examination of the woodblock print revealed a hidden fifth peony, the sculptor took the opportunity to complete a three-dimensional interpretation of the print in his own vision.

“In Japanese art, the void, the empty space in a piece of art, called ‘ma,’ is considered as important as the space that is painted, or full, which is why I had to pay attention to that sense of balance in my sculpture.”

The idea of bringing Hong Kong-made peonies to Venice is an opportunity that particularly excites Wong, because “it feels like bringing back to the city of Marco Polo he says. “On first seeing a peony in China Polo wrote ‘I have never seen roses like this, as big as a cabbage!’ This astounding ‘rose’, which so impressed the renowned traveller, was indeed a peony, a flower that originated from China, was brought to Japan in the 7th century, to Europe only in the 14th century and to the American continent in the 19th century. It has a really cross-cultural journey and significance which I like.”

The style of the peonies being presented at Homo Faber are slightly different to those Wong has crafted for Van Cleef & Arpels. The single sculpture that will travel to Venice has a more nuanced colour distribution through each petal, while the ones on show in the jewellery boutiques are uniform, once again, to pay homage to Van Cleef & Arpels’ signature stylized style.

Wong doesn’t only make peonies, but all sorts of flowers, including roses and dahlias. “I make flowers according to the season, but I find peonies therapeutic. You can make whatever kind of peony as there are thousands of different types,” he says, harking back to his roots as an arborist and landscape designer. “I like to use flowers as my own diary. I find I can express myself through peonies better than through any other flower.”

His passion for peonies is indeed contagious – in spite of the fact that they are not easy to grow in Hong Kong, as the climate is too hot for them. But through Leo Wong’s porcelain creations we can have long-lasting, blooming peonies even here. “I try to make the fleeting, eternal, to capture the full bloom of a flower and make it last forever,” he says.

All photos are courtesy of Van Cleef & Arpels.