When Metal Behaves Like Cloth
Material, Convention, and the Objects We Wear
Pocket, But Not — COTH x Boyu Yan
By returning the pocket to the body as jewellery, Boyu Yan reconsiders the relationships between clothing, function, adornment and the body.
By Canvas of The Heart
September, 2026
In Boyu Yan’s Pocket Me!, interconnected metal rings form flexible structures that fold, drape and move in response to gravity and the body. By reconstructing the pocket as jewellery, Yan draws attention to how material shapes the ways objects are perceived, classified and valued. A familiar garment component becomes a point of entry into the histories and systems of meaning embedded within the objects we wear.
Virtual exhibition view, Pocket, But Not, Canvas of The Heart, 2026.
A surface Made Through Connection
In Pocket Me!, chainmail forms the openings, edges and contours associated with contemporary pockets. Worn as brooches and rings, the linked surfaces bend and drape in response to gravity and the body. On closer inspection, this flexibility can be traced to the construction of the works: each surface is assembled from individually connected metal rings.
Each ring retains its defined shape, but its connection to neighbouring rings permits movement across the wider structure. Flexibility is generated through this articulation: the mesh can bend, gather and drape while its individual components remain visibly distinct.
Chainmail is therefore not a continuous sheet of metal, but a structure formed through repetition and connection. Its density, openness and movement depend on the arrangement of its links. The metal retains its weight and firmness, while the mesh acquires a pliancy associated with textile. Yan works through this coexistence of material resistance and structural flexibility without requiring metal to imitate cloth.
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Translating the Pocket
Within Pocket Me!, Yan applies these structural qualities to forms drawn from pockets in contemporary womenswear. She does not treat the pocket as a two-dimensional outline to be rendered in another material. Instead, she reconstructs the openings, edges, folds and contours associated with textile construction through an interconnected system of rings.
Textile pockets are conventionally shaped through cutting, folding and stitching. In Yan’s works, the accumulation and arrangement of links generate volume and definition across the mesh. This is a process of material translation rather than substitution. Chainmail remains visibly distinct from fabric: its individual links, open structure, weight and articulated construction remain apparent. Yet its capacity to fold and drape recalls the behaviour of textile closely enough for the pocket to remain recognisable.
The pocket is not imposed upon chainmail as a predetermined shape; its form emerges from the possibilities and constraints of the linked structure. Its contours and movement change in response to gravity, placement and the body on which it is worn.
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From Garment Component to Jewellery
As metal takes on the flexibility of cloth, Yan separates the pocket from the garment and reconstructs it as an independent piece of jewellery. This change in material and context alters the terms through which the object is encountered.
Within a garment, a pocket is ordinarily read in relation to the surrounding fabric. In Pocket Me!, this familiar component is presented as brooches and rings. It retains a recognisable relationship with clothing but is no longer permanently attached to a particular garment.
As a brooch, the work can be attached, removed and placed elsewhere, allowing the wearer to determine its position. As a ring, the pocket form is reduced in scale and worn directly on the hand. Each format establishes a distinct relationship between jewellery, clothing and the body.
As jewellery, a form that might otherwise be read quickly as a garment detail becomes available for sustained attention. Its scale, surface, weight and points of connection invite closer examination. The pocket remains recognisable, but the terms through which it is encountered have changed.
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Material and System of Value
Materials shape how objects are understood. A pocket made from cloth and incorporated into a garment is encountered differently from a related form constructed from metal and worn as jewellery. This difference emerges not from material properties alone, but from histories of making, wearing, collecting and display.
The distinctions between clothing and jewellery, utility and adornment, the ordinary and the precious are not inherent in objects themselves. They are shaped through histories of design, patterns of social use and systems of value. Through repetition, certain materials and processes become associated with particular fields of practice, while certain objects come to be treated as worthy of collection, preservation or display. Over time, these historically produced distinctions can appear self-evident.
Yan brings these distinctions into view through a change of material. The pocket remains recognisable because its form retains an established association with clothing; reconstructed in chainmail, it enters the material and disciplinary context of jewellery. The resulting work invites closer consideration of how a garment component may also be understood as jewellery and artwork.
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The pocket as Material Culture
Material culture considers objects as evidence of the societies in which they are made and used. Their significance is not limited to physical form. Materials, methods of construction, patterns of wear, circulation and placement can reveal how people assign value and understand identity and the material world.
Viewed in this way, the pocket is more than an isolated detail of dress. Its proportions, position and method of attachment result from particular design decisions. Its relationship with the garment reflects assumptions about how clothing should function, while its proximity to the body connects these decisions to the needs imagined for the wearer.
Objects worn on or close to the body are especially revealing because they participate in how the body is presented, accommodated and understood. Clothing and jewellery can communicate identity, affiliation and value while also reflecting the design systems and cultural expectations within which they were produced.
By reconstructing the pocket in chainmail, Yan brings the material languages of clothing and jewellery into direct relation. The work retains the visual memory of a garment component while adopting the material and modes of presentation associated with jewellery. The pocket thus becomes a means of examining how meaning emerges at the intersection of form, material, context and use.
The cultural significance of Pocket Me! begins with the specificity of its forms. The construction and material behaviour of each work provide the basis from which broader questions emerge; social meaning develops through these material details rather than being imposed upon them from outside.
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What the Ordinary Contains
Within the curatorial framework of Canvas of The Heart, Pocket, But Not demonstrates how close attention to an ordinary object can open onto broader questions of cultural and social life. The exhibition begins with the pocket but extends to the systems through which objects are designed, worn, interpreted and valued.
Yan does not introduce an unfamiliar form. She reconstructs a widely recognised garment component through another material language, directing attention towards the pocket’s construction and the cultural associations that have developed around it.
Extending beyond a study of chainmail or contemporary jewellery, the exhibition considers how objects worn close to the body carry histories of design and use that may otherwise pass unnoticed. Even the smallest garment components are shaped by decisions about material, form, function and the body; through repeated use, these decisions become embedded within everyday experience.
By enabling metal to move like cloth, Yan allows the pocket to leave the garment without losing its connection to clothing or the body. Reintroduced as jewellery, it brings into view the histories of design, assumptions about the wearer and systems of value embedded within an ordinary object. The pocket becomes a means of examining how the things worn closest to us participate in shaping understandings of the body and the organisation of everyday life
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Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum – Design Across Time In-Gallery Resources. Accessed August 2026.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum – Why Sensory Design? Accessed August 2026.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Shirt of Mail and Plate. Accessed August 2026.
OpenLearn, The Open University – An Introduction to Material Culture: The Study of Objects. Accessed August 2026.
UCL Anthropology – Material Worlds. Accessed August 2026.
Victoria and Albert Museum – Make Your Own Tie-On Pockets. Accessed August 2026.