W OM EN OF A C H IE V E M E N T
Jenny Garrett McLaurin THE GOLDSMITH
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and tiny garnets. “You’ve gotta break some stones to learn how to do it,” Jenny says. “There’s absolutely no replacement for creating custom gold jewelry practice.” in Chatham for more than 20 She adds “I knew I wanted to do it while I was young before years, but she’s been honing her craft for much longer than that. I had kids and while my eyes were still good. And I’m so glad I did, because it takes 10 years to figure out what you’re doing.” “My grandmother and great aunt In 2009, Jenny and her husband, Christopher Crean, adopted would give me their junky costume two brothers from Ukraine, Hughson, 14, and Crozes, 13. But jewelry,” Jenny says. “I would take it little has changed in her work over the years – she starts each apart and rearrange it.” piece of jewelry with sheets and wires of gold and platinum from After graduating from Northwood which she cuts, molds and solders every element. High School and UNC, Often, customers approach her with aging she worked a series of jewelry they want refashioned. apprenticeships and signed “There’s “I love old diamonds, old mine-cut diamonds,” up for a metalworking Absolutely no Jenny says. “I know I’m getting to work with class at the Penland School replacement a little part of something that is important to of Craft, a well-regarded for practice.” someone.” art school in western Melissa Messer grew up with Jenny in North Carolina. There, Pittsboro and remembers her early focus on arts, she made fast friends with particularly in drawing. another woman in class who taught her “She seemed out of place in Pittsboro, like she was too the basics of metalworking. worldly,” Melissa says. “She brings the world to Chatham.” “It just became overwhelmingly As Melissa approached 50 last year, she asked Jenny to clear that this was what I wanted to combine the stones of two rings into one. “We spent four hours do,” Jenny says. In 1997, she bought in her shop just talking,” Melissa says. “The whole time she was metalworking tools – “I still use some of them today,” she says – and an old, thick sketching, and when I looked down, she had designed my ring. I said, ‘That’s it.’” textbook called “Bead Setting Diamonds Jenny fashioned a ring that set the older diamonds around with Pavé Applications.” three gold leaves honoring her son Gabriel, 16, and two “Let me tell you, that was not a very nephews, Tayten, 12, and Cullen, 8. Melissa now wears it every sexy book, but it taught me how to set day. beads,” she remembers. “It was in black Whether remaking an old friend’s ring or reading a textbook, there’s and white, and the pictures were no good. still no substitute for practice, Jenny says. But I learned it.” “I have a good friend who brought in a ring to be polished up that I She drew her own designs and then made five or six years ago,” Jenny says. “I said, ‘I made this? I’m better practiced translating them to metal by now.’” – Matt White molding and soldering with sterling silver enny Garrett McLaurin has been
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Chatham Magazine
April/May 2019