Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emily Webster. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Emily, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I began making wire-wrapped, leather, and cord jewelry in high school, spurred on by my part-time job at Michael’s Arts & Crafts. I had always had a penchant for creative projects, like making handmade stamps for custom holiday cards, or hand-dyed silk scarves, and once I started making jewelry and doing photography in high school, I was hooked on both art forms.
Fast-forward to college, where I was a BFA – Photography candidate and enrolled in a classical metalsmithing class during a semester abroad in Tuscany, the birthplace of lost wax casting. My professor, goldsmith Gary Noffke, ignited a love for the finer details of jewelry-making beyond beads: casting, forming, fabricating, and smithing.
A few years later, I was in NYC and heard about the classes offered at the 92nd St. Y, where I took a class with and later apprenticed with Master Goldsmith Donna Distefano, a former ancient jewelry reproductions metalsmith for the Met. She suggested I get a secondary degree at FIT, her alma mater.
After that stint, I moved to New Orleans and worked for jewelers Thomas Mann and Dominique Giordano before landing a job setting diamond engagement rings all day at a Jared – The Galleria of Jewelry. Sterling Group sent me to their home office for intensive stone-setting workshops, and all the while, I was soaking up knowledge from my manager, Sergio, who was from a historic Taxco family in Mexico. Taxco is world-renowned for its silversmiths.
I’d had lots of training, but I never had the confidence to go out on my own as an independent jeweler. Had I done that at a younger age, I think my skills would’ve progressed more quickly. When art is your full-time job, I imagine that continuing education is much easier to slide into one’s schedule.
I’ve had numerous full-time jobs, many of which have been within the jewelry industry, but they’ve never fulfilled my drive to create
Emily, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve had training in jewelry and metalsmithing from numerous talented mentors, and much of what I currently produce results from some of that training. Unfortunately, due to time, space, and equipment budget limitations, I primarily construct using hand fabrication with cast elements in a tiny room off my kitchen. I look forward to a time when I can have a larger studio space and a full-time life dedicated to being a jeweler!
From what I’ve heard from my followers and the collectors of my work, one thing that sets me apart is my gem selection and the ability to make interesting combinations of seemingly mismatched gems. I use a variety of metals in each piece of jewelry I create, such that the ingredient list is too long to stamp on the reverse of any piece without creating a jumbled mess. I adore how 22K yellow gold interacts with blackened Sterling silver, and I use 14K yellow gold for its tensile strength and fine silver for its malleability.
What I’m most proud of is that most of the purchasers of my work are more than just customers—they’re collectors. Once they buy from me, they see the quality and uniqueness of what I do, and knowing that I rarely repeat myself, they want more one-of-a-kind goodies.
I love playing without planning, and I love to surprise myself with new ways to attach earwires to the primary elements of an earring or figure out how to build a dynamic connection between the elements of a necklace and its chain. It’s really all about exploration and play for me.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is definitely the connections I make with other jewelers, followers and collectors. Jewelry-making is a solitary role for me, and having the social outlet provided by the internet and Instagram gives me the positive feedback necessary to continue with this as a side hustle.
I work full-time as a Marketing Director at St. George Spirits, the oldest independent American distillery. While I love my job, which certainly has plenty of social interactions with both coworkers and customers, it’s rare that I can connect with those people about art or jewelry.
Because of this, some of my best friendships are with people I’ve not yet met in person!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson I had to unlearn was creating one piece at a time from start to finish. Given that I have been making jewelry ‘in the background’ of my life while working in various full-time positions and raising a family, I began to notice that long stints of time would pass between completed pieces. It’s such a challenge to START, but it’s easy to KEEP GOING, you know?
In 2021, I decided to create a collection of jewelry where I worked on 20+ pieces simultaneously, and it changed how I worked. I made 20-30 bezels for those pieces; I made 15-20 chains with hand-forged hooks for those pieces, and I soldered all 30 bezels to back plates together. All of those steps and stages of creating were elongated because of the volume, and working in stages means that you can’t move forward to completion in an expedient way. If I finished a step on several pieces, there was always more to do, other pieces to move on to.
There’s a writer whose philosophy of continuing interest in a work is to ‘never finish’. This is not to say that I don’t finish pieces—I do, but there is always something else on my bench in the process of being continued. There’s always an easy way to KEEP GOING tomorrow, the next day, etc.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mavensjewelry.com/
- Instagram: @mavensjewelry