Laura Lee grew up between her grandmother's jewelry box and the Pacific — one full of things worth keeping, the other full of light. After art school and a metalsmithing apprenticeship in downtown Los Angeles, she rented a corner bench in a shared Boyle Heights workshop in 2012 and started making rings for friends.
The friends told their friends. By 2014 the corner bench had become a studio; by 2016, the studio had become an atelier on Sunset Boulevard with two full-time goldsmiths and a waiting list for commissions.
Made of Los Angeles
The work is shaped by this city: the late light that turns everything gold at six in the evening, the flea-market brass that taught Laura what patina means, the ocean twenty minutes west that keeps showing up in shell and mother-of-pearl details.
Everything we sell is designed and finished within a few miles of the atelier. Casting happens downtown in the jewelry district with a family-run foundry we've worked with since the beginning; the stones come from cutters we know by name.
What we won't do
No plating, no vermeil, no hollow tubing that dents the first winter you wear it. Solid 14k gold and sterling silver, recycled wherever the mills can supply it. It makes our pieces cost more than the mall — and it means your daughter will argue with your son about who gets them.
The people
Laura Lee — founder and lead designer. Still at the bench most mornings before the phone starts; still solders every bespoke engagement ring herself.
Mariana Ortiz — goldsmith, with us since 2015. Stone setting, chain work and the steadiest hands in the studio.
June Park — studio manager. Runs the appointment book, the repairs ledger and the coffee machine, roughly in that order.