All About Feline Collection

We first exhibited the designs for Feline Collection at the Ping An Financial Center gallery in Shenzhen in September 2020. The exhibition was one of the first public showings of work by Sol and Wen since the disruptions of that year, and the response was different from what they had expected.

The 2020 Ping An Exhibition

The Ping An Financial Center is one of the tallest buildings in the world. The gallery space sits at its base, and in September 2020 it was one of the few cultural venues in Shenzhen that had reopened to the public. Visitors who came to see the Feline pieces that month were not expecting jewelry. They were expecting art objects, and that is what they found.

The reaction that stayed with Sol and Wen was not the praise — it was the questions. People wanted to know why the cats were abstract rather than literal. Why no whiskers, no eyes, no tail rendered in detail. The answer is the same reason the Sketch Collection avoids anatomical precision: a literal rendering closes the object down. An abstract one stays open. The cat in these pieces is recognisable as a cat, but it is also a shape, a weight, a presence. That ambiguity is the point.

Why Abstract Cats

Sol and Wen had been working with body forms in the Sketch Collection for two years before the Feline pieces emerged. The cat came out of the same process: starting with a gesture rather than a subject, and following the line until it resolved into something recognisable. The silhouette of a cat — the curve of the back, the set of the ears, the particular way a cat holds itself when it is watching something — is already close to abstract. It does not take much reduction to arrive at a shape that reads as feline without being illustrative.

The decision to work in gold vermeil rather than plain silver was deliberate. Cats in Chinese culture carry associations with good fortune and the warding off of bad luck — the beckoning cat figure is the most visible version of this, but the association is older and less commercial than that image suggests. Gold felt like the right material for a piece that was meant to carry that kind of weight without stating it directly.

From Sketch to Gold Vermeil

The process for each Feline piece begins with drawings — not detailed technical drawings, but quick gesture sketches made to capture a posture or a silhouette. Sol works through many versions of the same form before settling on one. The criterion is not accuracy but tension: the line has to hold something. Once a sketch passes that test, it moves to a wax model, then to casting in 925 sterling silver, then to the gold vermeil process, which involves electroplating with a layer of gold over the silver base. The result is a piece that has the warmth of gold and the durability of silver underneath.

The Pieces

Cat & Ball Necklace

The Cat & Ball Necklace is the most direct piece in the collection — a cat in profile, rendered as a single continuous line, suspended from a fine chain. The ball at the cat's feet is the only element that breaks the silhouette, and it changes the reading of the piece: the cat is no longer simply sitting, it is engaged with something. It is one of the most-gifted pieces in the collection, partly because it reads clearly at a distance and partly because it works on almost any neckline.

Hanging Cat Earrings

The Hanging Cat Earrings take the same abstract silhouette and suspend it as a drop. The movement changes the piece — a hanging cat reads differently from a seated one, and the slight swing of the earring when worn adds something that a static piece cannot. These are the pieces most often chosen by customers who want the Feline Collection to be visible rather than quiet.

How Customers Style Them

The Feline pieces are worn in two distinct ways. Some customers treat them as statement pieces — the Cat & Ball Necklace worn alone on a plain shirt, the Hanging Cat Earrings with nothing else. Others layer them: the necklace with a shorter jade piece from the Jade & Stone collection, or the earrings paired with simple studs. Both approaches work because the abstraction of the pieces means they do not compete with other jewelry the way a more literal design would.

Who Buys Them

The Feline Collection is bought by two distinct groups. The first is cat owners, who want a piece that references something they care about without being novelty jewelry. The second is people who have no particular connection to cats but respond to the form — the abstraction appeals to them as design rather than as subject matter. Both groups tend to buy the pieces as gifts as often as they buy them for themselves, which is consistent with how the collection was received at the 2020 exhibition: people kept asking who they could buy them for.

The full Feline Collection is available at amoy.jewelry/collections/feline-collection. All pieces are 925 sterling silver with gold vermeil, made not to tarnish.