Jewelry of Eastern Lanna Identity: Strategies and Approaches for Contemporary Jewelry Design from Cultural Identity

Abstract

Today’s jewelry designs look more contemporary, emphasizing self-expression by reflecting the perspectives and ideas of designers and artists in the context of society, culture, ethnicity, aesthetics, technology and ways of life through designs that are unique and in line with today’s lifestyles to create new artistic approaches. This research presents strategies and guidelines for designing contemporary jewelry from cultural capital by using the eastern Lanna area as a case study. The researchers conducted a unique analysis by studying the image and identity of the provinces in the eastern Lanna region, which led to the development of strategies and guidelines for jewelry design that reflect the eastern Lanna identity, as well as assessment of the perceptions of and satisfaction with jewelry prototypes designed by these strategies and such guidelines.

The results showed that, in this research, the BLEND strategy was used in contemporary jewelry design, which was developed from the interpretation of the identity, image and characteristics of the provinces in the eastern Lanna group, into a design development in the form of a mixed design, or hybridization. These guidelines for creative design have generated design terms and conditions to present the value of work that expresses identity through four elements, namely 1) color, 2) materials, 3) patterns/shapes, and 4) story contents, which are synthesized through the perception of representative images to design and produce jewelry prototypes. The results of the evaluation of the jewelry prototypes as a whole revealed that the jewelry can express the eastern Lanna identity in an effective way, resulting in the creation of new knowledge in design, which is the development of concepts and processes to interpret new meanings in design in order to create value and worth as part of the utilization of cultural capital in the development of the country.