Born into an artistic family in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Laura Frank was exposed from an early age to music, art, dance and to the artisan lifestyle which she observed daily in her parents’ leather workshop.
She always knew that one day she would have a workshop of her own where she would create items that would bring others the satisfaction of wearing something beautiful and handcrafted.
As a high school student in Brooklyn, New York, Laura continued her interest in fine arts studying painting and drawing at the Arts Students League of New York, where she was exposed to live drawing with nudes, exploring figures and lines that have influenced her artistic work ever since.
In 1998, Laura received with honors her Bachelors of Industrial Design from the prestigious Pratt Institute. Some of her favorite classes were conceptual 3 Dimensional Design, Color Theory, Space Analysis, Furniture Design, Art History, and Sculpture. As a student, she traveled to Rome and later on across Europe to deepen her studies and feed her artistic and creative soul.
This mixture of fine arts and Industrial Design background led Laura to jewelry-making. Initially as a means to model larger-than-life scale sculptures, Laura took on wax carving. These pieces evolved into Laura’s first collection, Metamorphosis. In the medium of jewelry, Laura found an opportunity to further explore her love of process with her unique sense of movement, space and color, creating jewelry designs with bold sensual lines. Her love of color is represented in her unique and one of a kind combinations of precious and semi-precious gems, specially represented in A Bead Affair collection.
In addition to designing and crafting jewelry in her workshop, attending trade shows and growing her list of businesses carrying her jewelry line, Laura went on to become co-owner of a very successful Brooklyn based jewelry and fine crafts gallery, N.C.H. Studio. For 17 years, Laura sold her own pieces directly to her clients and operated as a buyer of jewelry and fine crafts made by other artists. The gallery represented over 300 artisans working in various mediums. Through this experience, Laura learned first-hand about all aspects of the wholesale and retail business.