Lauren Wolf
Bay Area, california
Lauren Wolf was introduced to the art of jewelry metalsmithing in the mountains of Mexico. Today, Lauren is best known for creating unusual rings using ethically-mined, rare colored diamonds.
After attending the University of Georgia for Journalism, Lauren studied with Billy King at the Sterling Quest School in San Miguel de Allende, where she fell in love with jewelry making. She deepened her knowledge by studying jewelry design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and describes her time learning from the vendors and artists of New York’s Diamond District as “priceless.”
Following eight years of creating jewelry in New York City, Lauren relocated to the Bay Area. Her designs incorporate seemingly contradictory elements — at once primitive and sophisticated, edgy and elegant, classical and unconventional.
“What I love about jewelry is the tangibility of it, the extension of personal expression that extends to the wearer, and the three-dimensionality of it. I love the tactile part of jewelry and that it’s a miniature art form—you can take it wherever you want.” — Lauren Wolf
TAP by Todd Pownell
Cleveland, Ohio
The jewelry designs behind TAP by Todd Pownell are the pique of craftsmanship and creativity—a unified result of the talents and experiences of Todd Pownell, Debra Rosen and their small team working out of Cleveland, Ohio. TAP’s root aesthetic is a romantic, sophisticated celebration of natural elements. The routinely elegant designs are enhanced by the prioritization of moral practices. As responsible jewelers, they exercise social and environmental responsibility by exclusively using ethically-mined stones and metals, maintaining a healthy work environment and managing their studio operations with green practices.
TAP evolved from the varied combined experiences of its founders, Todd and Debra. Todd is a technically trained goldsmith and graduate gemologist with fine jewelry historical knowledge. Debra’s experience is rooted in the European studio atelier practice and its jewelry fine art traditions. Together as a couple they merged their complementary perceptions to the romantic aesthetic that identifies the TAP jewelry design sophistication.
Todd’s signature design is the “upside-down” or reverse set diamond. This method reveals an alternative way the diamond can capture and reflect light at unexpected, oblique angles. The materiality of light and dark is a key concept in the designs, as Todd experiments with the relationship between the two. Another key element in the work is the rugged versus the refined; a juxtaposition that creates an inherent balance within a piece. Distinguished metals and gemstones are beautiful not only because of sheen or lustrous color but in their ultimate molecular structure, an evocation of mystery, and the fast-changing yet eternal conditions of the natural world.
