Peter Chang (b. 1944), who lives in London, ranks among the leading jewellery artists of our time. He uses plastic, a highly contemporary material, to create luxurious, eye-catching, voluminous works of art in fantastical forms with an endless range of colours. His creations are inspired by the amorphous creatures of the sea, such as cephalopods. He begins with a carved core of polystyrene and covers it with layer upon layer of coloured acrylic. These layers are then reworked, shaped, decorated, and inlaid in a process consisting of up to 100 stages, and finally covered with a specially dyed varnish and polished to a high gloss.