Meet the Artist

Meet the Artist

• M.F.A in Metals and Jewelry Design
at Rochester Institute of Technology
 – Thesis <Rematerialize>, 05/14/2015

• B.F.A in Metalsmith at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, 2011

•New Approach School for Jewelers, 2024 - Pneumatic Engraving, Comprehensive Stone Setting

Le Conte is painterly fine jewelry. Founder Eunmi Han materializes the language of painting - brushstroke, texture, color, light - in 14k solid gold, most purely in the Impasto Collection.

When Eunmi Han arrived in the United States for her MFA, the plastic all around her - straws, packaging, the disposable - stopped her cold. Her 2015 thesis at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rematerialize, was her answer: jewelry built from fused plastic straws, acrylic paint, and silver. But it wasn't jewelry inspired by painting. In her thesis exhibition, the jewelry was shown as one element of the painting itself-which connected to the texture of canvas to brooch and rings, not beside the art, but inside it.

That idea became Le Conte: jewelry not inspired by art, but made as art.

After graduating, Eunmi came to Los Angeles, working as a CAD designer for manufacturers in the Downtown jewelry district before opening her own freelance CAD studio serving independent designers. But her own early work didn't feel like hers - she missed the texture of her MFA years in silver. She wanted to bring canvas to gold. During the Covid lockdowns, she learned ZBrush from her husband's cousin, a game background designer. By day she was the lead CAD designer for her clients; her own experiments happened at night. Those stolen nights stretched into nearly two years before she could sculpt the thick, buttery texture of oil paint in digital clay. That experiment became the Impasto Collection - and Le Conte as it is today.

Discover the Art