CUSTOM JEWELRY

In the Studio at LEDE, Ginger Meek Allen works to create custom jewelry for her clients. Learn more about commissioning a one-of-a-kind piece to capture your personal story here.

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Welcome

Lede Studio & Gallery is located in downtown Wake Forest, North Carolina, As you enter, you find the gallery presentation of the work of a variety of talented artists - both metalsmiths, sculptors and narrative painters. You may hear tapping from the metals studio, which occupies the back of the industrial building. You may notice a fine art collection of the current exhibition. Lede is the studio home of Wake Forest's own Ginger Meek Allen Metalsmith, as well as a teaching studio and exhibition gallery.

Visitors note the interplay of styles among the displays in the gallery. Assemblage sculptures are presented beside found object jewelry, beside mixed media paintings. With contemplation of each piece, a narrative emerges. Narrative work seeks to communicate a truth beyond providing a source of aesthetic enrichment.

Ginger does not work alone in the metals studio. Other metalsmiths and curious creatives are likely also exploring metals as a medium in the studio space, either via a LEDE workshop or through utilizing the opportunities for open studio time or bench rental. It's a dynamic studio space, well-equipped and safe for creative exploration.

While studying journalism as an undergraduate, Ginger Meek Allen added the obscure word "lede" to her vocabulary. The word developed during the mid-20th century in America as an alternate spelling to "lead" because of confusion in the press room. Did "lead" refer to the first sentence or paragraph of a news story, or the space between the lines of type, or the soft metal used in the printing process? The alternate spelling for the word used to refer to the first paragraph of the news story developed as "lede" to prevent confusion and thereby facilitate efficiency in the press process. It has been called an "insider's variant" used only by those driven by the almighty deadline.

Perhaps life is not a series of events. Perhaps instead our lives are a story - Act I, Act II, etc. Perhaps we are the leading character in our story. Perhaps we can learn something from the stories of others.

Lede Studio & Gallery is about story. With its focus on narrative art and jewelry, it will present a myriad of stories, as well as an opportunity for one to honor and preserve his or her own story through artwork with which they identify or through a piece of jewelry created solely for the purpose of honoring that story.

Ginger has created custom jewelry for hundreds of clients, and in every piece her mission was to preserve the story of her client. Wedding bands, pendant representations of births and deaths, or pieces that celebrate personal victories are all examples of her work.

Ginger studied writing and art, and went on to marry into a community journalism family, working in the newspaper business herself. She had also discovered metalsmithing, and found it, along with the arts in a broader sense, to be an excellent match for her skills and interests. Yet, she couldn't resist the story.

Story is the guiding principle of journalism. Story is also the guiding principle of narrative art. Ginger's work is a marriage of the two, with story being the underlying theme in it all.

Please visit us at Lede Studio & Gallery.

Bring your story.

Meet LEDE's resident metalsmiths....

Lede Studio & Gallery

LIZ MOSIER

GINGER MEEK ALLEN

The wedding was planned for the next year. Samantha came to the studio with a small jewelry box in her hands. It was the kind of jewelry box with a fabric lining, little padded grooves for rings, and a small mirror inside the lid. When she opened the box, we perused her collection of rings, earrings, pendants and brooches. "I never wear this stuff," she told me. But it had all been given to her or she had purchased it years before. It was nice "stuff," but just not right for her anymore. With wedding plans in the works, she was wondering about ways to use the jewelry she had collected in her fabric jewelry box to create something new - wedding rings perhaps. She knew that I love to do that. She could certainly have sold the jewelry for its value as scrap gold. But there were several diamonds and other stones there. And, it reminded her of her grandmother. So, we took another approach. I harvested her stones, refined her gold, and we set about designing rings for her and her husband-to-be. She had plenty of melee diamonds, which we decided to use in the wedding rings. I designed two bands. Hers featured the diamonds flush-set around the entire ring, off-center, in a random pattern of large to small. His featured the same pattern, but secretly flush-set on the interior of the band. If they take off their bands and stack them, the patterns match. As I was setting the diamonds - a bunch of them - I noticed the colors of the stones. They varied in color and quality, and like the couple, these stones had come from different places and had different stories. But in these rings, they were coming together to form a symphony, as a symbol of this couple's covenant relationship. -Ginger Meek Allen

Read more about Custom Jewelry here.

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