Crafting Elegance w/ George William Jewelry

September 21, 2023

For most, jewelry is an afterthought, a way to polish off an outfit with a little bit of shine or secure a last minute anniversary gift. For George William, jewelry is a constant part of life.

After initially going to college for Business, George switched to an art degree and almost instantly found something that could hold his attention. Working between a unique balance of hyperactivity and patience, the one of a kind designs are made from start to finish in his Diamond District studio so customers can rest assured that his were the only hands to touch them — something that can’t be said for most store bought jewelry.

With a focus on craftsmanship and the finest stones, the architecturally-inspired pieces are the result of endless hours spent setting stones, polishing, and staring through a microscope as George William, like many designers, aims to drive the business without compromising on artistry.

Interview by Dylan Andrews
Photography by Mitchell Connell
Video by JP Blair

What are you working on at the moment?

I just finished that necklace, so I've been able to breathe. I'm working on this ring, setting all the diamonds on the side that have just been kicking there, taking the back burner for this thing to be finished. I’ve got two ideas for necklaces that I really, really want to make. And so that's going to be a whole start from the beginning process. And then I have three ideas for rings that I'm really excited about.

What's the process from when you have this idea? How does it go from the idea to the final product?

They're all fully visualized in my head before anything. So, then it's like, how do you spit out this thing that I've already created in my mind and how do I then turn it tangible, right? So, I always have the idea first. I then usually go to the computer and make a CAD model. And then the metal portion, I decide whether it needs to be hand fabricated or if casting is a better process to use for whatever the design is. And then just go from there to the setting, to the engraving, to the polishing.

What's inspiring you at the moment?

I'm pretty much completely inspired by architecture. Architectural features and ornamentation and then minimalist sculpture I find a lot of inspiration in. But probably nine times out of ten; architecture.

Any particular architectural movements?

No. Super, super spanning. Just walking around. I've been loving a lot of the little wrought iron fence embellishments. The random little shapes that are made in the fences, or random shapes in church windows because I'm always looking for things that look like diamonds, but at a different scale.

That’s cool.

So, then you see this little grouping of these shapes that are all basic diamond shapes, whether they're round or marquee or pear shape or something like that, some square cut. And then you already have this amazing form and you just turn into a pendant or an earring or whatever it might be. But I've really been loving architecture.

What are your design principles?

Emphasis always starts with the stones. I love the way the diamonds play with light, so always trying to bring the focus back to that. Movement and jewelry is pretty self-explanatory, right? Whether it be how a chain moves or even how the person moves while wearing it. With something like fine jewelry, there's only so many ways to accomplish the processes. I have to have the stone secured in the metal. And so there's these age old ways that people have figured out how to do that. And so lately I've been taking traditional stone setting styles and then exaggerating the proportions of the individual features in each separate style.

What's the balance, do you think, of art vs science?

I’ve never thought of it like that. I think I lean more towards science.

See, before I saw the studio I would’ve thought it was purely an art form, but when you're showing me how the diamonds… It's just crazy. It's so technical.

It gets even crazier, because at some level, I'm doing metallurgy here, I'm mixing the metals myself, trying to get these perfect alloys to have the properties that I want. You're running into problems based on scientific things, weight by volume, atomic weights. It gets really stuck in the weeds at some level in a science realm. I never get stuck on the design or the art aspect.

I'm guessing there's designs that would be amazing but technically or scientifically, they’re not realistic. Or is everything realistic?

No, I bet you're right, but… I think how my brain works is that I'm so familiar with the technical aspect of it that I'm already designing within these parameters, these walls that I know exist based on what's possible, and then I'm just living inside of those spaces. I guess maybe we'll have to shake them, right?

Yeah, maybe we got to break those walls down, for real. What things do you do when you're stuck for motivation or inspiration?

Well, that's the craziest. I'm never stuck. Because if I'm telling you I'm inspired by art and architecture. We live in the middle of New York City, step outside and you'll see something cool. I swear the hard part with jewelry is I'm more hindered by access to materials than access to ideas.

Is it difficult coming up with ideas when you have such little material to work with?

I love this scale. How small everything is, is one of my favorite parts about jewelry from a feasibility perspective. Bigger is sicker for the most part as far as diamond jewelry is concerned. So always playing with that, figuring out ways to play with lights so things feel bigger than they actually are. I'm always trying to figure that out.

But you don't wear a lot of jewelry and I’d say your stuff is fairly minimal. Do you have a ‘less is more’ approach when it comes to jewelry?

I think so. I think at some level things get so ornate that it just takes away from the intrinsic beauty of the actual items themselves. The stones themselves are so pretty that really overdoing it in some crazy filigree pattern or something like that, to me, doesn't really add much. Maybe just takes away. I even love just fine metal work with no stones.

After seeing how that clasp works, I can’t help but feel that there's a lot of people that are so invested in how their jewelry looks but they couldn’t give a shit about how it's made.

Well, yeah, it's so many levels. I always describe it as 'golden Legos'. There's all these stores that sell all the different pieces, and then these jewelry designers, they just buy this piece that holds the diamond. Then they buy the diamond, then they go pay the guy to put the diamond in it. Then they go buy the chain that connects to the thing, and they buy the little clasp that goes on the back and they just play golden Legos and they put together a necklace. That's what we're trying to avoid.

Is there an artist outside the jewelry world that inspires you?

I'm going back to minimalist sculpture; I love Donald Judd. Classic minimalist sculptor. These shelves are inspired by one of his sculptures. He's super famous for these series of stacked cubes but he's not making any of this stuff himself and they're just industrially made plywood or sheet metal objects, but just all simple geometry.

So, it’s more about the way he puts them together than how they’re made?

I think more than anything how they interact with the space that they're in. Which is an interesting take when it gets into jewelry, how they interact with the person wearing them versus how they interact with the gallery space or the room that they live in, how these little adornment objects interact with the person who wears them and the life that they live.

How did you first become passionate about jewelry? At what point did you consider it a serious career path?

So, I have a fine arts degree in metalsmithing and jewelry design. At first, I studied business when I went to college and I hated that, but always loved art. So, I took a year off and figured I would switch my major to art and did, I took a jewelry course and was really captivated pretty instantly. I felt like I had some level of innate talent in it really quickly too, which is always reassuring when trying something new. And from there, it really, really held my attention, which is always something that I think we're all struggling with.

Yeah. For sure.

Learning jewelry making in an art school environment, it's not really this type of jewelry, it's more those people that already shook the box I was talking about. They're like making something out of yarn that's really a ring. How I got through art school was, I told them all I cared about was craft and craftsmanship, and that's all I wanted to focus on. I wasn't focusing on pushing anything. I only wanted to have super high-quality craftsmanship and they bought that for the two years that finishing that degree took.

Then I went to a trade school to learn fine jewelry making and diamond setting. I worked as an apprentice for a year under a German master goldsmith that made everything by hand, no casting, no nothing, just all hyper traditional handmade techniques. This was all in California, in The Bay, and then I came out here because this is really where jewelry is actually made in this country and started working in regular commercial jewelry factories.

Has jewelry design made you want to explore other areas of design?

I always loved all different types of design. When I was really young, my dream job was to be the person that built architectural models. For when somebody's building some crazy skyscraper, I wanted to be the guy that makes the mini version out of Popsicle sticks. And so, I've always loved this small scale and attention to detail. I don't really know where it comes from, honestly, but it's always been like that. So, jewelry is this perfect thing for what I've already always loved.

Yeah, it's natural.

I guess it's even more perfect because layered on top of it, this inherent preciousness of the metals or the stones is extra enjoyable to me. I already love the scale and then the fact that these things are precious and completely inert, indestructible, and last forever, makes them even that much more special to me.

It seems like you're around jewelry all the time. Do you distinguish between life and your work with jewelry at this point, or is it just one in the same?

I mean, look around, it all bleeds to one a little bit.

I feel like that's what happens when you do what you love, though.

There's no point to distinguish. I don't think that there is a very direct split. I think it all does bleed. Inspiration comes at any moment, so you almost can't really...

You can't turn it off.

The things I love in life, are art and architecture anyways, that's where my inspiration comes from. This is what I do. And there's the super corny idiom, find a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. But I don't even know if that's what any of this is about. It's all bled in. It's all the same things I love. A more modern take on the same idea is, if you want to be successful, find something that looks like work to other people, but feels like play to you, and that's the sweet spot everybody wants to be in.

The fact that these things are precious and completely inert, indestructible, and last forever, makes them even that much more special to me.

Is there a specific clientele or demographic you have in mind when you're coming up with designs?

I don't really have an answer to that. I literally just make things that I love, and I use the best stones. I'm telling you; I'll spend 150 hours making one thing because none of that really matters to me. All I care about is getting the idea out and then having it be as finely crafted as humanly possible. And so, it's like, ‘who's going to buy that?’ Or ‘who even wants to buy that?’ I don't know. But I think that they're out there.

I feel like jewelry, more than anything, is so hard to pin to a demographic. For example, my favorite piece of jewelry is probably my pearl bracelet from Chanel, and if you think about Chanel’s pearl target audience…

They weren't thinking about you.

The complete opposite. So, I think make it, and if people buy it, they buy it.

At least for now, that's where I'm at. All my friends that work in venture capital or marketing and stuff like that, they're all trying to convince me to make some silver ring so all the homies can buy one and make it more accessible from a price point or from a material standpoint. I don't really have any interest in that.

I feel like that's the hard part as an artist; you just want to create art and everything else is secondary. But it's also a business.

And some minds have been able to mold those two worlds really seamlessly. And I think that they're hyper well compensated for figuring that out. But for me, if it's not exactly what I want it to be, what's the point in sitting here doing it in the first place.

I remember when I first came here, and you were showing me through everything. The first thing I thought was, I wouldn’t have the patience for this. Is that patience something that comes naturally to you, or was it something you had to teach yourself?

I think it's that classic ADD mindset. Inability to focus, yet some superhuman ability to focus if you're fully interested.

It has to be the right thing.

And it's so zoomed in. I spend my whole day staring through a microscope, and I'm so zoomed in that I'll just get lost for hours.

I remember a homie back in high school saying ADD was the best thing that ever happened to them. It gets diagnosed as such a hindrance, or whatever. But when they find that thing, it's like a superpower.

Superpower. And sometimes that thing turns out to be video games or sports or whatever it is, but then there's these few people where it turns out to be painting or some other meticulous thing, and they're just locked on it. And so, for me, it's such a blessing that it’s this thing that I love and it's how I live. It really, really keeps me locked in. That necklace I was showing you took 150 hours.

Wow. I don’t know if I’ve ever spent 150 hours doing any one thing.

I'll be sitting here at the jewelry benches for 80 hours a week. And it's like, God, this sucks. I have no life. But I know that when you're in the future, you're going to look back on this and it's going to be the most glorious time.

Fashion

Happy 424 Day!

Simon Rasmussen — What's going on?

Guillermo Andrade — Right now we're just setting everything up.

So, what are you doing, is it a party?

Well, I kind of felt universally forced, right? Because 4/24/24, I was just like, I don’t really have a choice here. The stars also just kind of aligned, so to be honest, I got this settlement that came with a bunch of clothes so I had this idea to give back to the kids who fuck with us by allowing them to buy our shit first. Not handing stuff out for free, but to do it in a way where we could skip the middleman of the industry, so to speak, and not allow clothes to disappear into the abyss of Farfetch or whatever else. So what we’re going to do is a sort of warehouse sale, which we’ve never done before so that was really exciting for me. I didn’t want to do just another warehouse sale, so it’s like a sample sale turns rager. We teamed up with Adidas and a couple of other sponsors, then drinks, DJs, and a performance.

Sick, I love it.

Yeah. My dream sample sale. Also, it’s not just hoodies and t-shirts here in there, it’s proper collections from the past three seasons. I’m also not picking and choosing, trying to make it accessible, like this was the only way I could afford to buy shit when I was a kid, bro. Sample sales were the thing I looked forward to the most.

I feel you. In New York, there's the annual CDG sale, which is when I used to cop all my CDG.

The only time I could afford Rick. I flew to New York once for a Rick sample sale and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I got invited. And it was mental. I still have those pieces. I will never sell them. Not even because I got 'em cheap. It was also just really fun. Even on the flight to New York, I was like, I can't believe I'm going to New York for a sample sale, what a fucking loser I am. But it was like the adult version of when I was a kid and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I'm 20-something and I'm still doing the thing I was doing in high school. So I hope we can create moments like that for kids here in LA.

Yeah. I love that. It’s important to connect with them; they’re essentially creating the brand. If you don't have them, good luck.

I mean, yeah. Fuck, bro. It's cool that we've been around for this long. I mean, it got a little rocky there for a second I think, for all of us. So coming out of it, tomorrow is a celebration. And it’s like an odd day of the week. It's a Wednesday, super random. And now that we've set it up, the homies are all like, Yo, I'm coming. I'm coming. Let me jump on stage, let me do this, and that's really what it's always been about. It's not some other strategy to get likes on the internet.

That’s how the best things happen, you just couldn’t help yourself. It was intuitive.

Yeah, it all came together in a really nice way.

Would you say that’s how 424 started as well? I remember we met in like 2010 on Fairfax and I was visiting with Rasmus…

Oh bro, it’s probably the time when I started the branch… do you remember Cecilia from Black Dakini? She’s the one that introduced me to CIFF and honestly, I didn’t even care what she was doing, I was just like, I’m coming, I’ll go with you. She said she’d give me half of her booth and I said, Awesome count me in. At the time, I had just gotten my green card and I wasn't allowed to ever leave America, so Copenhagen was one of the first cities I went to when I could finally travel. I mean, you see what we did at CIFF bro? It became our fucking hub for half a decade.

That was a moment for sure.

I remember the first account I got was Antonioli, and he came super gangster, being like, You're going to sell me these clothes. And I was like, bro, I didn't come to sell clothes. I'm just kind of catching a vibe with my homie and I made these things. And he's like, No, you're going to sell it to me. And then I was like, Oh my god that’s Claudio Antonioli. So then I went home, I googled wholesale, and figured that shit out. [laughs]

[Laughs]

Like you said, I couldn't help myself, but I didn't just make t-shirts and hoodies either. I was really on my Rick wave, so I made my version of the Rick things. It was that meets like The Boondock Saints, because I'm still a little bit of a Cali bro, sort of rock kid, but not really. I like hip-hop, but I like the way the rock stars look. I like the contrast. I thought it was cool. After that, I just never stopped.

It was clear to me when I first met you that you were onto your own thing in LA. It made a lot of sense, and it was so cool. It was before 424 was its own brand; you just had the store and this really cool curation.

It was all my shit, bro. I was very, very invested in sharing all of these things that I was finding from all over the world, like Astrid Anderson. She was one of those designers at the time, so important to 424. The connection to Copenhagen specifically for me was huge. I had a big fan base there. It was incredible. And then here in LA, we were sharing the things that we were a part of and finding; it was still the early days of Fear of God, Rhude, Martine Rose. A lot of these brands, we were the first store to ever sell it — we were selling Hood By Air on the West Coast.

You had Rick as well, I remember.

Oh yeah. It took me a long time. But I got Rick, bro. By the time I had to close the store on Fairfax, I already had a Raf Simons account. I had reached my ultimate dream. It was really all the stuff I wanted to wear at the time. It was dope. The best of the best.

We had an office magazine newsstand in there as well.

Oh yeah, we did! I came to visit the one you had, and I was like, Yo, I got to bring this whole fucking thing over here. But yeah, in LA, after two days people forget you exist, but everyone’s been super supportive. We’re all 10 years older now. We've been around forever at this point.

It can be dangerous to take those breaks when you’re figuring shit out, but there’s something very genuine to this comeback you’re having.

Thank you, thank you. We’ve been in and out of those fucking showrooms in Paris for long enough. I've been in and out of these factories for the past 10 years of my life. We had to figure something out. And I think now really diving in, being in Italy full time and being there to develop these products over time, I think that the whole thing just really shows the suppliers respect you more. The people who are making your goods understand why you're making them. And I think now I finally got to the place where I'm not making Italian things, I’m making my clothes, I'm making Cali-centric shit, but with that European technicality and execution. With this Fall / Winter collection, it clicked.

So what’s the vision for the next year? What are you manifesting?

I'm just fucking relentless, bro. This is the way I want to live my life. Now that we are more aligned, more prepared, and have more experience, moving forward it is just more of becoming a fully functioning company that can provide and create opportunities for all of the people around me. We’ve been operating just on instinct for a long time.

Sustaining a business is scary, trust me I know.

Scary as fuck, dog. I just opened a store next to Bottega, bro, and it’s like what am I even doing? You have to just believe in the thing you're doing more than anybody else.

100%, and it seems like that’s what you’re doing.

And fashion’s kind of a competitive sport, as much as people don’t think it is. We can reach a certain level without losing ourselves. My biggest ambition at the moment is to create something that, when you leave one of our neighbors you come into our place you don’t feel that the level has been sacrificed at all. And it’s not easy.

Definitely. I wish I could be there tomorrow.

Thank you, bro. 10 years now. You’ve always shown me so much love. We have to do a booth or have the office part of the next 424 day. Shit let’s do a 424 day in New York.

That would be sick. Let's do it. I'm here. Let’s catch up soon.

Next season’s right around the corner so I’ll see you in Paris.

Yes, see you in Paris and Happy 424 day!

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