We were lucky to catch up with Melissa Tyson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

So I was kind of an odd bird you could say I was very right brained and left brained growing up. Always making art, but also very good at math so naturally my parents wanted to encourage me to get a degree that I could have a career job in so they said,” hey you could be an accountant, you’re so good at math.” So off to college and taking the math courses needed for accounting, bored out of my mind! I called them within the first year of college and said I am either going to drop out of college or I’m going to art school. So they said wait wait don’t drop out of college, if you’re going to go to art school then you should meet some of our friends that are graphic designers because that’s a way that you could make a living in art. I obliged and went and met some graphic designers …. And at that point, decided I wanted to go to Savannah College of Art and design or Pratt or Ringling. If I was going to go to art school it had to be the best. My parents said well we will pay for in-state tuition and you can pay for the rest. After thinking about that and getting out as an artist with that type of debt and I knew that that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I sucked it up and transferred to East Carolina University, which ended up being one of the best decisions of my life. At art school, we had to do a year of basic classes. My beginning design teacher was teaching a metalsmithing class the next semester and said you should try out my class, at that point not knowing what type of art I wanted to do so I said sure sounds like a great idea. The minute my hands, touch metal I knew that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.!!! Then graduated with a degree in metalsmithing jewelry design.
During my time in college, I apprenticed with a very famous Goldsmith in Greece & Italy named Lisa Sotilis, that was an incredibly formative time and dreaming of what I wanted to do with my jewelry design degree. Also, I had the opportunity to study with some different professors out at Montana State for a year during that time I explored blacksmithing with a female blacksmith, I got to apprentice with a swordsmith who smelted his own steel right out of the Montana mountains and we would make Japanese Damascus blades.
Determined to learn from as many people as I could within passion for jewelry, diamonds and gold. Realizing that I could learn endlessly in the world of jewelry design and metalsmithing, learning for the rest of my life and never learn all there is to know!
Right out of college I moved back over to Europe to live an apprentice with Lisa Sotilis once again and realized that I wanted to make a career out of jewelry design. That has really come full circle for me. Fast-forward 20 plus years later and I just had the honor to show my most recent artisan engagement ring collection at Milan fashion week just this past February. I contacted Lisa my mentor from 20 years prior who flew over from Greece to Milan, Italy, to come to my show. It was just the most magical full circle moment. In fact, it gets even more wild. I was showing with a clothing designer Shetol Chawala and she had picked the music for our runway show. After the show, Lisa was crying and she said I was there. I was there. The music that she had chosen for our runway show was from an old movie called Once Upon a Time in the West filmed in 1965. Lisa Sotilis, my mentor, The Golden Greek, was living at a hotel having an exhibition in Europe of her incredible, gold necklaces. Meanwhile, the entire cast of that movie was living at the same hotel while they were filming that movie and composing the soundtrack for it. We were all in awe, God was writing my story before I was even born!!!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have been creating jewelry my whole life, even selling wire rings at the swimming pool when I was a kid. Starting my career mostly working in silver for my larger production lines sold in 40 different stores across the country. But I was always creating in gold for unique custom engagement rings. My dream was always to launch a gold & diamond line.
After I got married and started having babies, I took a bit of a sabbatical. At the time we had three children under three years old my husband owned his own company and due to some crazy circumstances the entire thing went under in a matter of days. So here we were a young married couple about to have three babies under three years old and no income. So I just set my heart to cashing in all of the scrap metal that I had been saving for the last 10 years and launching my gold & diamond line. I have a very good friend that owns a higher-end jewelry store in town and he had promised to give me a space on the floor to sell my jewelry once I completed the collection. I took it into him, sat it on his desk and came back a week later and had not moved off his desk. When I asked him why he said Melissa your engagement rings are too artistic for Wilmington, NC. No one is going to buy it. Our sales people said it’s going to collect dust. I’m never going to show that. They said her work would do better out in California or some artisan community. And then he proceeded to tell me that because his employees were working on commission, there was no way he could force them to show my jewelry to his customers. So I walked out with my entire life investment in my hand. I had cashed in everything and had nowhere to sell it. I was so mad and upset, but I took that no and turned it around and kept going. I prayed to God and said if this is really the direction I should go with my jewelry please let me sell a gold and diamond ring by the end of January, I opened an Etsy store online, photographed all of the pieces and put them up for sale and on January 31 , I sold not one but two gold and diamond engagement rings!
Following my dreams and taking this risk was one of the best decisions of my whole career. It has been the most incredible and wild ride from years ago, being featured in Vogue magazine to most recently being invited to show in Paris fashion week and Milan fashion week!
More than anything getting to live my dreams and love my job the way that I do is one of my life’s greatest blessings.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of my job as a jewelry designer is that I get to custom handcraft unique engagement rings for clients all over the world. Being a part of their milestone moments and helping them to create such an incredibly special timeless, heirloom treasure for marking their proposal stories and their life is always my favorite part of what I do. It’s like I get to create little pieces of joy for people to wear on their hands. And it’s like bringing their love story to life in the form of a one of a kind engagement ring and then I get to be a small part of that story that they can tell.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think my goal and mission and what I do is to bring beauty into the world. And a very small tiny thing like an engagement ring, something that can how old so much sentimental value and meaning for people and bring them joy every time they look at it. It can evoke emotions and memories of someone they love, especially for people that are able to use family heirloom diamonds and their engagement rings passed down through generations. It’s like a weaving of stories and beauty and being able to make that into something that will stand the test of time and can be passed on for generations to come . That is what I love in being an artisan engagement ring designer and what drives me and the mission of what I do is to connect with people like a friend into guide them through the process of custom creating their engagement ring. To make it a really fun and beautiful process instead of stressful. With my company as a whole , my heart is to serve my community and to give generously into missions to make people feel loved.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Melissatysondesigns.com
• Instagram: https://Instagram.com/melissatysondesigns
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/melissatysondesigns
• Linkedin: https://LinkedIn.com/melissatysondesigns
• Twitter: https://Twitter.com/mtysondesigns.com
• Youtube: https://YouTube.com/melissatysondesigns
• Other: Pinterest.com/mtysondesigns
  TikTok.com/melissatysondesigns

Image Credits

Headshots Drewe & Kate Branding Co.
Product photos Matthew Ray Photography