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Tooth Gallery.

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Towards the end of 2019, Che-Wei issued an open call for a tooth sized art installation where, prior to multiple lost battles with chicken bones + peach pits, his #9 incisor once lived.

The winning proposal was awarded to artist Judith Prays, who offered one of her late Grandmother Larisa's gold molars as material to fashion a new tooth with the engraving "SO LUCKY". The farthest the gold can be traced back is to pre bolshevik revolution Ukraine, where it took the form of Judith's great grandmother's fine jewelry. Larisa, the only survivor from her family of WWII, managed to save her mother's jewelry when she escaped the Nazis through the forest into Eastern Europe. After the war and before immigrating to america, the jewelery became Larisa's dental work.

Please take a minute to read more about Judy's proposal, along with her grandmother's Larisa Striliver's story.

In the days leading up to the gallery installation, Che-Wei's dentist (and friend from highschool) wouldn't send a picture of the artwork he fashioned. So what we initially thought would be a delicate + high precision engraving turned out to be his friend's hand-held chicken scratch lettering of SO LUCKY. It's our favorite touch.

And just when we thought tooth gallerey couldn't get more savory, it was spotted this week in NY Mag's highly esteemeed approval matrix, inconspicuously placed somewhere in the spectrum of highbrow and brilliant.

Pen Type-C in colors