Audrey Yifei Li is a Brooklyn based designer. Her jewelry brand ELSEWEAR [别饰 / bié-shì] focuses on handcrafted contemporary heirlooms inspired by the rich tapestry of Chinese culture. By emphasizing cultural symbolism with artisanal quality, Li’s jewelry bridges the worlds of modern minimalism and heritage craft.

Her new jewelry collection included in the ‘Art of the Jewelry Box’ Exhibit revolves around jade, a gemstone deeply revered and symbolic throughout the Orient. Diverse shades and cuts of jade are hand-selected and reinterpreted for contemporary sensibilities. Several jade stones featured in this series are one-of-a-kind family heirlooms from 1970s Hong Kong.

Each of the six jewelry pieces showcases jade in unique ways to express themes of old and new, masculine and feminine, and above all else, timeless and beautiful. By reframing this familiar stone through modern aesthetics, this collection adds to the storied legacy of jade for the 21st century.

Li was trained as an architect and a graduate from the Yale School of Architecture. She has held exhibitions in select galleries in New York.