Palace cats provide a gem of an idea for jewelry design

Within 20 minutes, 400 items of limited-edition jewelry created by the designer Fang Yimin for the Palace Museum in Beijing were sold out on its online shop.

Even she missed out on buying a piece.

On the bracelets, earrings, necklaces and rings that Fang designed for the museum, the central element is a kitten playing near a round carved window, an image inspired by the tale of an emperor living in the Forbidden City with his beloved cat.

Fang, 35, runs a popular account, devoted to fashion, on the social media app WeChat. It boasts more than 900,000 followers.

Last year when the Palace Museum invited her to work with it by designing some jewelry she was surprised and excited.

"This is the first time I have designed things for a museum rather than a luxury brand," she says.

When her research revealed stories about cats in the Forbidden City, she decided to use them for her jewelry designs instead of choosing typical images such as princesses or traditional architecture that the Palace Museum naturally brings to mind.

"The Palace Museum is very picky when it comes to the merchandise it brings out, but it's open to new ideas," Fang says. It took 10 months to produce the jewelry she designed.

On many visits to the Forbidden City she saw cats sleeping on window lattices, so she decided to include them in her designs.

For her, the cats represent love and companionship, and this is no better illustrated than by the life of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), whose cat accompanied him until his death.

Since Fang's jewelry went on sale in August it has proved to be extremely popular, despite being priced at between 399 yuan ($60; 53 euros; 46) and 699 yuan, a lot more than other museum merchandise.