 As a child Hovey adored her mothers great sense of style and always loved the visits to the tailors and jewelers. She was also enchanted by the eclectic designs and custom furniture her father, an interior designer, created for their home. Hovey has a degree in music as well as library science, but jewelry making has been a part of her life since her teenage years. With the constant encouragement and support from her friends and family, Hovey launched her jewelry line in 2005 and instantly captured the attention of the fashion and art communities. She was selected by Gen Art Fresh Faces in Fashion as the accessory designer in that same year. Hovey's collection is inspired by both design forms and by world cultures. She studies the essential design elements from different ethnic styles and fuses them with her California sensibility to create a stylish, interesting, and fresh look. To contact Hovey, please write to info@hoveylee.com.
What Sets Us Apart ... Our Designs
We believe our customers have exquisite taste in jewelries and understand designs. We do not follow trends merely because they're popular, nor are we satisfied with just making pretty pieces of jewelry.
We thrive to reflect our customers' interest in designs by offering thoughtful, inspired and meaningful pieces that are personal and timeless. Hovey Lee implements the
principles of socially and economically responsible business by working with Fair Trade vendors and eco-friendly material producers.
Out of over a hundred participants of the prestigious Gen Art's Fresh Faces in Fashion 2005, Hovey Lee was selected as the single jeweller in the Accessories category. The collection was embraced for its "unusual cuts (stones stacked to look like leaves, gems arranged like petals), unexpected color combos (carnelian with pale aquamarine, coral and blue chrysocolla), and surprising materials (wood, Venetian glass)." Daily Candy April 4, 2005.
We believe in celebrating our heritage and rejoicing in multiculturalism, a quality we constantly try to communicate in our collections.
We believe each woman is unique and her mood and style changes day to day. That's why we do not confine oursleves to one signature look.
We believe minimalism is overrated.
We believe in nourishing your heart first, showing and accepting kindness, and in both designs and business, we follow our hearts, not rules.
Our Carefully Sourced Materials
We are dedicated to promoting fair trade, human dignity and environmental sustainability before profits.
Our designs are sourced from the gemstone suppliers that adhere to Fair Trade sourcing standards. These standards ensure that these gifts from nature are brought to the customer in a safe, socially and environmentally responsible way that cares not only for the materials but the people who are involved in the process. Fair Trade gem standards uphold labor conditions and workers’ rights, environmental protection, product integrity and supply chain transparency from gemstone mining, cutting, to processing. Besides sourcing new gemstones, Hovey Lee's Los Angeles studio continues to use components extracted from vintage jewelries and recreate new designs with reclaimed and recycled findings and gemstones.
Wherever possible, Hovey Lee uses metals from renewed sources derived from recycled jewelry or reclaimed metal companies. By using renewed metals, our goal is to reduce the need for additional mining of precious metals that could be very harmful to our environment. We are striving to make sure that our suppliers comply with the principles outlined. By supporting the No Dirty Gold campaign's Golden Rules, we hope to reflect the values of our customers around the country who have a deep commitment to human rights and the environment.
Our Jewelry Making Process
As artisan jewelry maker, we use both classic and modern wiring, beading, and metalsmithing techniques to create jewelry that features the beauty of the materials used.
A wide variety of textures, patinas and finishing techniques are used to bring the pieces to life. Semi-precious stones, natural and sometimes man-made materials accent and compliment the designs. We work in a range of materials including reclaimed base and precious metals, standard and Argentium sterling silver, vintage karat gold, gold-filled, vermeil, brass and copper to produce jewellery that is meant to be enduring and beautiful.
Jewelry has a language of it's own. Here are some of the terms you'll see used throughout the site:
Forging shaped by repeated hammering against something hard like an anvil. We love the variety of textures this technique brings to the piece. It is our favorite way to show the hand-worked quality of our jewelry.
Fabrication applies to the structures by cutting, shaping and assembling components made from raw materials. Fabrication is a primary technique in the making of jewelry and is applied on many pieces you see here on HoveyLee.com.
Raising is a metalworking technique when a sheet of metal is curved by repeated hammering and annealing of the metal to form the desired shape. Synclastic raising, the dominant curves of the object being forged are at right angles and move in the same direction. Anticlastic raising, on the other hand, refers to shaping an object where the dominant axes move in opposite directions.
Casting is a process by which the metal is introduced into a mold, allowed to solidify within the mold, and then broken out to make a fabricated part. Casting is used for making parts of complex shape that would be difficult to make by cutting from the metal.
Karat Gold pure gold being designated as 24k. The gold more commonly sold in the market are 22k, 18k, 14k and 10k. A lower karat indicates that a higher percent of copper or silver in the alloy, with copper being the more commonly used metal.
Gold-filled Most Gold filled jewelry is composed of a solid layer of gold bonded to the outside of a base metal such as brass. Our high quality gold-filled pieces have the look, luster, and beauty of real 14 karat gold.
Vermeil is a combination of sterling silver, gold, and other precious metals. Our vermeil jewelry is sterling silver coated with 22k or 18k gold.
Charities
Hovey Lee supports several different charities, including UNICEF, WorldVision, Project Angel Food and The American Cancer Society.
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