Chuck | The Designer

Chuck is a Thai American jewelry designer and the director of Deific. Early on while growing up in Bangkok, Thailand, verbal communication was very difficult for Chuck due to a speech impediment and resulting reserve. In order to reach his peers and communicate his feelings, Chuck instead spoke through drawings and other forms of art. His artistic inspiration first arose from visionary experiences that he had at an early age. Staying up late at night in bed, Chuck would gaze shadows play on the wall as they formed into creatures, visions, and spirit beings. These early visionary experiences were then channeled into his art. His earliest works centered on characterizing and representing these wonders that appeared to him in shadows and dreams.

As a teenager, Chuck’s love for travel, interest in diverse cultural beliefs and his search for knowledge brought him to study and practice art in the United States of America. Immersing himself in counter-cultural music scenes in Los Angeles, both as a performer and aficionado, Chuck’s distinct aesthetic would be shaped for years to come.

After receiving a fine art bachelor’s degree from the University in California, he began to consider the best medium for his artistic visions. He returned to his native home in Thailand to reflect and gain inspiration from the powerful symbolism that is embedded in the spiritual landscape of the country. One day while watching a news broadcast on a Thai TV channel, he saw a driver total his car. Oddly enough, the driver walked away completely unscathed. The news incredulously reported that the driver attributed his miraculous survival to a beautiful golden amulet necklace that was kept inside the car. Chuck reflected upon this event - it was amazing that such a small object could be imbued with great symbolic meaning, beauty, and power. This was the moment when he collided with the world of inspirational jewelry and decided to dedicate his art to jewelry creation.

For the next several years he would travel back and forth between Bangkok and Los Angeles. He would learn jewelry craftsmanship from the artisans in these regions that had been practicing for generations while also setting up a permanent base of production in Thailand. Given that Bangkok is a jewelry capital, his choice in the matter was easy and natural. Slowly handcrafting a collection of cutting edge spiritually charged designs, Chuck then worked with metalworking artisan guilds to bring his visions to life using only the finest, hand-sourced materials.

While perfecting his collections, he learned that in Los Angeles, designs had become iterative and machined jewelry had produced increasingly stale and lifeless products. In 2008, Deific was released to fill this void. With heart and soul, and a hybrid identity of the east and the west, Deific was born.