In this month's spotlight of Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC)-owned jewelry businesses I am excited to feature Ling Ling, the masterful silversmith behind LLMExclusive. Ling Ling's jewelry is exquisite, complex and full of meaning.
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Photo by @caevanburen
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Originally from Malaysia, where she started jewelry making, Ling Ling now lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She brings an impressive array of skills to her work. In addition to fabrication, she incorporates lost-wax casting, stone-setting and enameling. This piece below is an incredible example of how many processes some of her pieces involve: she cast lace in bronze, painted and fired the enamel woman, fabricated a stone setting and made the whole thing wearable as a necklace OR a brooch!
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It takes a lot of skill with a torch to fabricate large and intricate pieces of jewelry. Ling Ling is masterful at this. She builds whimsical scenes with layers of shapes and stones, using metal as if she is sketching scenery. Below are two pieces that fully display Ling Ling's eye for detail...and her love for animals! She has four rescue dogs, two cats and coi fish, who often make adorable appearances on her IG feed.
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Currently she is working on a new collection called Lunar Dreams Part II that's inspired by Chinese lattice work and botanical symbolism. Ling Ling shares beautiful historical explanations about this collection in her Instagram posts, which are sure to teach you something you didn't know before. Another testament to her fabrication skills is this stunning silver orchid below, crafted piece by piece out of silver then soldered together. Be sure to keep tabs on her Etsy to see what this orchid becomes when the Lunar Dreams Part II collection is complete.
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I hope you've enjoyed looking at Ling Ling's work. What she creates is truly impressive. I have found myself puzzling out how she even went about constructing certain pieces because they are made with such fine attention to detail, like this Arrival of the Five Blessings bat pendant.
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I'll leave you with some turquoise of course :). This beautiful Royston pendant is available in Ling Ling's Etsy shop.
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