Will Shott

Will Shott never meant to open a gallery. He intended for the space to showcase his iconic jewelry. Now, with an art gallery in the front and Will’s studio in the back, www.willshott is fast becoming the place for art-jewelry collaborations that you won’t find anywhere else.

There’s a term in hip-hop: flipping. It’s a production technique that involves rearranging a beat or loop to create a unique sound. It’s about looking under, over, and behind a pattern —tearing down a monument to give it new life.

Will’s jewelry is like this. It’s classic jewelry-making turned upside down — a Black Jesus carved in jade with a gem-studded crown of thorns, a half-emerald half-diamond engagement ring, a string of ivory pearls transformed into a chain of silver pearls – sometimes with his tag, www., interspersed.

The thing is, Will didn’t actually intend to be a jeweler. He was studying sculpture in art school in Houston and got a job working behind the scenes for a hip-hop promoter working with the likes of A$AP Rocky. Backstage, Will saw musicians gravitating towards gleaming grillz, pendants, chains, and out-of-the-box bling. A glint caught his eye and he never looked back.

First, he dropped out of art school and hired an old-school jeweler who taught him how to carve jade. His first piece of jewelry, the now iconic Black Jesus, got approval from the likes of Kendrick Lamar and evolved from there.

After that, Will moved to NYC and started collaborating with Trevor Andrew, whose signature Guccighost motif (which started as a Halloween costume with cut eyes rimmed with the Gucci’s Gs ) was everywhere at the time. Will went on tour for the Guccighost rollout, working as the DJand it was then in 2013 that he created the first necklace out of the figure before the Gucci brand found out about the Guccighost project. His first big break, it turns out.

When Will decided to open an NYC jewelry showroom in 2022 and the cases didn’t arrive on time for the opening, he staged a spur-of-the-moment art show with Treveo instead. It was called Kill Shott, riffing on the name of a diss track by Eminem. The pair collaborated to create a ring in the shape of a horseshoe and dead cow skull. It was old-school tropes infused with the contemporary vibes.