Prize pieces
Thai student designs a winner
One way to build on the knowledge that you learn in the classroom is to enter competitions. At the recent Create Your Own Legacy compete-tion arranged by the Gemological lnstitute of America,20-year-old Thai student Nattawat Srinoon (Tum)won first prize. Tum is a jewellery design student at Silpakorn University’s Faculty of Decorative Arts.
“The competition was a once in a lifetime experience, “Tum said.” It as well as learn how to design and produce jewellery produce jewellery profess-sionally.”
THAI INSPIRATION
Tum named his winning design piece You clothe Me, because he used woven fabric as a primary part of the design.
“When I was looking for inspiration for my design, I was thinking about something from our heritage that we should preserve, “Tum said.” I thought of Thai woven fabric because it looks intriguing as well as being part of our folk traditions and culture.”
LEARNING EXPERIENCE
It took Tum only four days to finish his design sketch, but during the prosess of making the necklace and earrings, he found that he had to make a few changes.”Some parts of a necklace included complicated weaves that required a lot of time to produce, and we had limited time, “he said,” I had to make it less complicated, so I used a metal weave design instead of woven fabric.”
WINNING WEAVE
Once Tum’s design was produced as an actual accessory, the young designer was impressed with its beauty. The model who wore his design also com-plimented the designer, saying that the pieces were beautiful. Though Tum was pleased with his work, he was surprised to win first prize.
“I was happy just to be one of the five finalists, and I didn’t expect any-thing more than that, “he said.” I was speechless when my name was announced as the winner!”
WARP AND WEFT
Tum thinks that the texture of You Clothe Me was what made it stand out From the work of the other 297 competitors.
“The texture expressed my concept about Thai woven fabric very well, Tum said. “The design looked like weaving on a warp and weft, and when the model wore the accessories, it looked like woven fabric on her body.”
FUTURE IN FASHION
Tum said that he wants to build on his success by continuing to design acces-sories in the future.
“I’m interested in accessory design, but I’ll focus on fashion accessories rather than jewellery, “the winning designer said.” I think I can reach more con-sumers by designing fashion accessories.”