Chelsea Lauren started having jewelry made for herself in the early 2000s — she had a vision of a certain softness, an almost nebulous quality, that isn’t easy to capture in metal but that she couldn’t stop imagining.

“I always wanted things that were well made and hefty, and I couldn’t find anything that I liked,” she said from her new showroom on Franklin. “Gold’s main value is its density. I didn’t want edges or ornamentation or straight lines.”

After five years of ruminating, she started George Rings in 2021, despite the fact that she was a practicing attorney and had never worked in the fine jewelry industry. Still, she said, “I thought I could do it. I’ve always had a lot of confidence in my design eye.”

And she did. She has a workshop in Salt Lake City, where Chelsea and her goldsmiths make everything by hand from solid 18K yellow gold using the lost wax casting method. She created proprietary finishing tools that allow the cast shapes to maintain that buttery softness. And of course there’s the heft. Every piece is solid, and that is an indulgence and luxury that is essential to the brand.

And that’s partly why she moved from Portland to New York, where, she feels, the market truly understands what she calls “private pleasure.”

“You’re paying for the feeling of weight — that’s a certain mentality,” Chelsea said. “It’s a subtle appreciation for understatement. You could have the same-looking ring and it could be hollow and no one would know. But *you* would know. That’s the private pleasure.”

She tested out the market with a pop-up in Soho in 2022 and proved herself right. Then she moved the family; she and her husband and three kids live on the Upper West Side. The showroom here allows more of what she calls her collectors, aka clients, to come feel and try the pieces.

The studio is really the best of Tribeca — installed above Shinola in what was their corporate office. Shinola owns the building and has done a beautiful job with the interiors. (The art she has around the room is all from her collectors.) As part of the decor, she had her original collection 3D-carved out of wood (by the man who built their log cabin in Washington) and then gilded. “My designs are really simple but when you see them big you can appreciate the shape a little more.”

Prices on rings range from $990 to $18,000. She doesn’t pay for marketing — only word of mouth. And she owns 100 percent of the company.

The name came to her in a dream — she saw herself on the cover of a magazine with a title that said, “The Woman Behind George.” And the crown was her idea of personal sovereignty: “We are all royal. In fact, I have no business in anything royal, but we can do whatever we want — we are sovereign.”

In addition to rings, she also sells pendants and charms, earrings and a new winter collection with blue-green tourmaline. She has other ideas for the brand, but she’s not saying just yet.

“I have a long-term vision for George as a brand with integrity,” she said. “To me it feels plodding and slow, but I also feel like there’s no one else making what I am making.”

George Rings
By appointment only or via video chat
studio@georgerings.com.
Appointments only, Tuesday to Friday, 11a to 3p