Iron in the Fire

Editor’s Note: THE AWARD Each year, WILMA selects a bracelet from a local jewelry designer that serves as the award for the Women to Watch Awards winners. The pieces, this year custom-made from Chelsea Lea Metals, will be unveiled and presented to the winners at the September 6 awards event.

Mythical gothic is how CHELSEA LEA describes the style of jewelry she creates. Available through her business, Chelsea Lea Metals, her work ranges from engagement rings to a gold skull, or Barbie’s hand – palm facing outward – dangling off a sterling silver chain. There’s storytelling, too: a silver octopus holds gemstones in each leg; a golden crab claw grips a taxidermy glass alligator eye.

“I like refined-looking jewelry that has a bit of edginess to it, a bit of a high-finish,” Lea says. “I like to think of my work as a vessel for memories. The pieces I make, I want it to be pieces people carry as amulets, pieces that have feeling.”

As a third-generation jeweler, Lea herself is a vessel for creation. Her mother is a jeweler and master diamond setter, and her grandmother taught jewelry design. She notes her grandmother’s profession as where she gets her passion for teaching; her mother is where her business and entrepreneurial skills come into play.

This trifecta merges into a unique skillset with offerings beyond the traditional small business model. Lea uses her master’s degree in film studies to create jewelry-making tutorials and documentary films, and her love of education is seen in the wide range of weekly classes hosted at her studio.

“My grandma was doing really cutting-edge work in the 1960s and ’70s. She was a pioneer with materials, and she was also a blacksmith. My mom went the more traditional route in jewelry and works professionally as a diamond setter,” she says. “My mother and grandmother’s work have high standards of quality, and I hold myself to a very high caliber when I compare myself to them. They’re both master jewelers.”

For Lea, her mastery lies in lost-wax casting, an ancient practice in which a duplicate sculpture, often of silver, gold, or bronze, is cast from an original sculpture; essentially, creating jewelry from a wax model.

Of the often-200-step process that she deems almost masochistic in its unpredictability, the outcomes are stunning. Lost-wax casting allows the jeweler to achieve extremely detailed designs while exploring their own artistic abilities and imagination through the pattern and mold-making process.

“The metal will pick up every detail,” she says. “That’s what I teach in my classes, how to carve rings from wax and how to create textures, how to set stones in place, and teach casting found objects like sticks and pieces from nature. You can cast twigs and sticks, bird feet, crab claws, Barbie dolls, and any found object that will burn out in a kiln. It’s like being a wizard, you get a wand and can turn anything into metal.”

Lea’s classes, which she notes are a large part of her business, include offerings of a two-day lost-wax casting class, a one-day cuttlefish bone casting, a hot date night where couples can make their own wedding bands, or private lessons on metal fabrication.

Education and the arts are woven throughout Lea’s family.

Her grandmother, PAT DUKE, established the first metals department at Troy University. One of her first students was Lea’s mother, DANA LEA. While pursuing her MFA, Chelsea Lea made a documentary film on the very subject titled Thread of Time, which also includes her great-grandmother, ALICE THORNTON, a weaver and painter.

Chelsea Lea herself holds a BFA in jewelry design from the University of Georgia and continued her education at the Gemological Institute of America and Penland School of Craft.

“One of the highlights of the jewelry industry to me is you’re continuing your education forever; you’re always learning something new. The industry is always changing and evolving. There’s so many paths you can go down and continue learning,” she says.

She notes her passion lies in working with metals, with her sights now turned to mastering stone-setting. Another path Chelsea Lea ventured down was a long time coming, pursuing her interest in filmmaking at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

“I use the skills I learned from UNCW in filmmaking to help create tutorial videos. I make jewelry tutorial videos and edit them, shoot them myself, and hope to continue education in a format anyone can access no matter where they are,” she says.

Lea says jewelry-making itself is a trade that’s experiencing a renaissance.

“Education and jewelry-making is a way that women are able to supplement their income,” she says. “Teaching women to supplement their income through jewelry-making has been a way for me to have many irons in the fire.”

To view more of photographer Malcom Little’s work, go to malcolmlittlephotography.com.

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