Gabrielle Harris

Gabrielle Harris lives in China where she draws on archeology, myth, and the daily life of changing China for inspiration. She has led and still leads several lives, building on her 20-year base of studies and sojourn in China as a business consultant, mother, writer, and designer. Gabrielle never had formal training in design, but she finds out more daily from the master-craftsmen who try to implement the ideas and concepts she roughly sketches for the workshop. "Through the stories that inspire my pieces, I try to let the wearer understand and maybe even own a little bit of China, a China that can so often feel closed off to people outside." In both her business and cultural life, she has always found herself acting as some kind of "bridge" between China and the rest of the world.

Gabrielle was a student at SOAS, London University, before she moved to Nanjing as a scholarship exchange student in 1980. At SOAS, she had the honour of learning ancient philosophy and history with truly learned sinologists. Having spent time in such tutorials, her arrival in the China of 1980 required some adjustment. The Cultural Revolution had just passed through and over the land; "WeÕd go on field trips with the History Department and all you would see and hear about would be ruins Ð broken-down architectural marvels, tales of lost skills whose last practitioner was harried to death, pushed-over statues of ancient sages, overly and unnaturally quiet artists hiding their pictures under their mattresses, a thousand headless Buddhas on cliff walls and temples." The devastation was complete. "I think the shock I felt at the time never wore off; though my work and my catch-phrase "bringing back the beauty", I am still trying to heal myself.

When Gabrielle started her small joint venture in 1996, almost no one in China was going to archeological sources for design ideas: "I couldnÕt believe it, given how many incredible artifacts were being unearthed all the time during the modernization of China during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. These ancient pieces hypnotize me."

This site will include a collection of her master pieces. Click into the images on the left to see an enlargement of the photograph and more information about its meaning.


Gabrielle Harris

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HOME
CULTURE
spirituality : design : water : fashion
ANIMALS
amphibia : reptilia : butterflies : panda : takin
TRAVEL
ecotourism : Xishuangbanna : Shangrila : Yunnan : Mekong
KNOWLEDGE
books : Buddhist flowers : consulting : science of ecology : medicine
PLANTS & SEEDS
bananas : ginger : herbs : orchids : trees : succulents : lianas : sacred trees
ART
Gabrielle's traditional motive Chinese jewelry : Wu Jialin's black and white photography
ECOSYSTEMS
rain forests : river banks of the Mekong : pools : sacred forests : sinter terraces : chili growing
CHINESE MEDICINE
AIDS/HIV : asthma : breast cyst : herpes : hepatitis : cancer : diabetes : health tea : malaria : Puer tea : flu
WHOLESALE

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