Cheryl Woon is the co-founder and designer at GIOIA Fine Jewellery, the Singapore studio she runs together with her husband and co-founder, Clarence Yee. She graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in 2010 and has worked in bespoke jewellery ever since, sixteen years and counting, ten of them at GIOIA.
An Early Recognition
In 2009, a year before she graduated from NAFA, Cheryl was selected for the Singapore Jewellery Design Award. It was her first public recognition as a designer, and she has said it gave her the confidence to treat jewellery design as a career rather than just a course of study:
“It is a great honour for me to be selected for the Singapore Jewellery Design Award 2009, a good beginning to my journey as a jewellery designer. I have learnt and gained a great deal of confidence through this competition, and I hope to become a successful jewellery designer in the years ahead.”
How GIOIA Began
GIOIA opened its doors at International Plaza in 2016. Cheryl had already spent six years in bespoke jewellery by then, and the studio was built on a simple division that still holds today: Clarence finds and assesses the stone, Cheryl designs and oversees what it becomes. Ten years on, that same split is still how every commission at GIOIA is made.
An Instinct for Personal Design
Cheryl’s part of a commission begins once Clarence has chosen the stone. Her instinct runs toward personalisation rather than a house style, matching a setting to how someone actually lives and wears jewellery rather than to whatever is trending that season. A commission usually goes through several hand-drawn sketches before a single stone is set, so a client can see and adjust the design before any metal is cut.
Diamond Grading, By the Book
Cheryl is a certified Diamond Grader through HRD Antwerp, one of the industry’s more rigorous grading bodies. That matters for a studio that sets diamonds as accents around a coloured centre stone as much as it does for a diamond solitaire: every accent diamond in a GIOIA piece is graded to that standard before it is set, rather than chosen by eye alone.
From Sketch to Bench
Once a design is agreed, Cheryl stays with the piece through to completion, working alongside GIOIA’s craftsmen rather than handing off a finished drawing and stepping away. Adjustments happen at this stage too. A stone can sit slightly differently once it is actually in the metal than it did on paper, and she would rather resolve that before a piece is finished than after.
Featured & Recognised
Her bespoke design work has been featured twice by Singapore Tatler, in pieces on creating personalised heirlooms and designing bespoke wedding jewellery. GIOIA has also been covered by CNA Lifestyle and Singapore Women’s Weekly, named in Honeycombers’ Best in Singapore Awards, and listed among Singapore’s Best Homegrown Jewellers in 2024 and 2025.
Design With Cheryl
If you have an idea for a bespoke piece, whether it starts with a stone, a sketch, or just a feeling you want the finished piece to have, Cheryl and Clarence take every consultation together at GIOIA’s studio in International Plaza. Read about Clarence’s side of the sourcing process, or get in touch to start your own.