Jewellery Showcase

South Korean finalist Guerina Yoo, aged 38, is an experienced jewellery designer who has entered and won a range of competitions in Korea and Japan as well as entering the HRD Awards for the first time in 2009.

Yoo, who lives in the South Korean capital of Seoul, is also involved with a number of design associations in Asia, including the Hong Kong International Jewellery Designer Association, and has exhibited widely in the region.

She studied gemmology with the GIA in Seoul, as well as the GIA's pearl grading and jewelry design and wax courses. In 2006, she was selected as an outstanding student by GIA Korea.

Yoo said the theme of the 2009 HRD Awards, 'Once upon a time... my favourite fairy tale,' was particularly appropriate for her since she is fascinated by the history of jewellery design and its cultural aspects.

Her entry for the awards was a head jewel based upon the Korean fairy tale 'The woodsman and the fairy'. In Korea, the hair accessories for brides on their wedding day are made of yellow gold. But instead, the artist chose dark bamboo to depict a sad bride forced to marry.

A woodsman steals the clothes of a fairy who needs her clothes in order to be able to fly back to her world so she marries the woodsman in the hope that he will return her clothes. But he hides them until they have two children at which point he feels confident that she will not fly away, and gives her the clothes back. But as soon as she gets her clothes back, she takes her two children and flies back to her world.

The veil attached to the bamboo stick symbolises the robe of feathers, set with 506 brilliant cut diamonds, with a total weight of 15.62 carats provided by Gembel European Sales NV. The jewel is sponsored by Soon-Young Lee.