Hotel Ugly Metal Jewelry is now offering one-of-a-kind, handcrafted jewelry made with sterling silver and domestically sourced turquoise at a new location in East McKinney.
The business offers a variety of handmade jewelry including bracelets, cuffs, necklaces, rings and earrings. The business was founded by artist and metalsmith Paige Rance, who has sold her jewelry through online platforms.
The new retail space is located in a converted grain silo and is part of the Build Your Own Business program at Tupps Brewery. The program offers vendor spaces on the Tupps Brewery property for small businesses.
Diving in deeper
Rance said she turned to jewelry making after her father passed,
“I just put my head down and just was doing and healing and crying and just processing everything, and jewelry was the way I did,” she said. “Art is healing.”
Her father encouraged her to pursue careers in law or aviation, she said, which is what later inspired the “hotel” portion of the businesses name, a reference to the phonetic alphabets used by pilots. Paige said she included “ugly” because it was a juxtaposition to “hotel.”
“I love the word ‘ugly.’ I just think it's in the eye of the beholder,” she said. “Who are you to say something's pretty or ugly, like it's beautiful to me.”
Quote of note
Paige’s husband Joe Rance said that jewelry making begins with an idea, but that idea may change as the process is underway.
“It's a material, and as you're playing with it, it decides it wants to do certain things and wants to go a different direction ... with the fire and the banging and the hammers and the saws and everything, imperfections and flaws come out,” he said. “Rather than try and brush those away or carve them out or get rid of them, we kind of embrace them.”
