My Life as a Jeweler Part 1

At work at 18 years old

A new reader asked me in my previous posting how I got into this business.  A few of you may know about this but I figured it's as good a topic as any so I might as well tell you.  When I was in middle school one of my classmate's mother and father owned a jewelry store in Stamford, CT.  I believe I was 14 when I went into the shop one summer day and asked if they had any work for me to do and they gave me a broom and told me I could clean up the store.  I didn't go in because it was a jewelry store.  I went in because I knew them and I figured it was as good a place as any to earn some money (something I had been doing in the summers since I was 12). 

I worked on and off for them for a few months and got to know them a little bit.  When I was 15 I happened to go in one day just to say hi and the owner (his name was David Goldfarb) asked me if I wanted a job since a young lady who had been helping them out in the store was heading off to college.  Again, I was always looking for work so I jumped on it. But this time Dave decided to actually teach me how to make jewelry.  At the time he made most of what he sold and the vast majority of it was in silver.  Dave, and his wife Liz, had been in retail most of their lives and had previously owned a clothing store.  But Dave was an extremely talented man in a wide variety of ways.  He was an artist, he had a very creative bent in many ways and he was adept at processes, by which I mean he could see a design in his head and then figure out a way to make it up in quantity with the least amount of effort and the most consistency. 

That was how I started, by learning some of the techniques and a whole lot about how to produce an item.  Dave taught me a number of extremely valuable lessons, some of which it took me decades to fully absorb, but the most important one was this:  It doesn't matter how great a design you have.  If the piece isn't made right and finished properly it won't look good.  And, conversely, you can have a pretty ugly design but if it's made right, it will look good.  Now I think at the time he may have said it will or won't sell, but it has become apparent to me over the years that there is plenty of actually horribly made and/or designed jewelry that does sell, but his basic lesson that you better make it right has always stuck with me and I have always tried my best to do just that with my jewelry. 

Dave taught me how to work in sterling silver but he rarely, at the time, worked with gold so I got no experience with that.  I worked for him for 3 years during which time I also began acquiring my own tools to make jewelry at home.  When I finished high school I stayed at home for the next year, continuing to work for him.  At 19 I moved up to Boston to go to college part time at UMass Boston.  But I needed to support myself so I made up a small line of sterling silver jewelry that I decided I would try to wholesale to stores.  It was really pretty silly when I look back at it now but I remember going into these places with a half dozen black velvet pads with pieces U pinned on them in a paper shopping bag!

So this is taking a little longer than I thought. I'm going to call this part 1 and I'll continue the tale in my next article. 

Shop Local. Again.

Blue sheen moonstones in 18k and 22k gold

When even my wife Kathy says that it's been too long since I've written a new blog article I know I've been absent from the pages here.  My apologies.  I don't have a regular assistant these days so I'm forced to do pretty much everything and I've been working 7 day weeks most weeks so if it seems that it has been awhile, it's true, but you'll just have to forgive me.  I'm returning to a topic I've discussed before because it cropped up again recently.  I am always unsure how this topic is viewed as it is, by necessity, self serving but it's a fact of life these days. 

So I had a gentleman come in my shop a few days ago and he asked me if I would look at the inscription on a diamond to see if it was the one he was actually sold.  The first thing I said to him was what I always say to these visitors.  Why oh why would you buy a product from someone you don't trust????  And he said what they all say when I ask them this.  Oh no, I trust them but could you just please look at this and tell me if it's the stone on the certificate.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who can see the fallacy in this statement.  If he trusts them, why does he need me to confirm it?  And if he doesn't trust them then why did he buy from them?  Now I'm a nice guy most of the time so I was going to look at his stone for him anyway so I figured I might as well go all the way and bring up the second part of this article. 

I then asked him where he got the stone (and ring).  I already knew what he was going to say but I just wanted to make sure. Of course he got it online.  I then pointed out to him that people like me (you know, the bricks and mortar small retailers) were going to go out of business and not be here anymore to verify his purchase if everyone just bought their products on line.  I asked him what he would do then?  What would he do the next time if there were no more jewelers on the street like me that he could go to for this kind of thing?  I got the usual, well everyone else was too expensive.  I looked at him and said, look I know I'm expensive, but I also know that there are plenty of bricks and mortar jewelers who will match the price of stuff bought on line because they've been forced to in order to stay in business.  He was very apologetic but being apologetic doesn't solve the larger issue here.  The larger issue is that you all need local shops for something but by shopping exclusively on line you are driving many of them out of business.

Everywhere I look I see things about "shop local".  I'm curious then why there are so many, who when faced with making an expensive purchase, throw away this option?  Remember, next time there may not be that hands on, actual person there to help out. 

And now I have a question for my readers.  My wife thinks I should charge for this service even though it only takes me a few minutes.  I have mixed feelings about it.  What are your thoughts?  And if you think I should charge for it, how much do you think would be reasonable? I'm also taking suggestions for topics you'd like to hear me address.  As always thanks for reading and please feel free to share my blog articles on social media.

P.S.  You can now find me on Instagram too so become a follower!

Restoring Antiques and More on Custom Work

Back in early November a customer of mine brought in half of an antique pin.  She had lost the male part of the pin (the piece with the pin stem on it) but still had the female piece.  She wanted me to make up the piece that was missing based on the existing piece and a picture of the original pin.  Fortunately she had good records and had taken a picture for insurance purposes so I not only had the original half but a good shot of what I needed to replicate.  The piece was from the late 1800's and in those days everything was hand built so it was kind of right up my alley.  However there were a number of issues.  The first is that coral is not actively being taken out of the ocean anymore so I needed to find a piece that was both approximately the same color and large enough to carve a duplicate from.  Fortunately I know a lot of people in the industry and I was able to get a referral to one of the few people left in the United States who might actually have something.  Nothing is easy in this business though so even though I was able to make contact with him quickly and he was fairly sure he had something that would work he was on his way overseas on a business trip.  After a couple of weeks I was able to get the piece out to him and he was able to come up with a piece that turned out to be an excellent match.  Then of course I had to get it carved and I'm not a gem carver so I brought it to a jeweler friend of mine to work on. By this time it was December and he and I were both in the middle of our busy season so needless to say I didn't see a finished carving for quite awhile.  Once I got it back I then had to rebuild the structure that actually held the whole thing together.  It proved to be an interesting challenge because while it might look somewhat straightforward it was anything but. It was white gold on the top and yellow gold on the back so it had to be completely hand assembled.  Every time I would put another section together it would look wrong and I'd have to go study the piece under the microscope again to figure out what I was missing and, sure enough, there was always some little thing they had done that wasn't immediately apparent. However I got through it and finished it up.  I don't think anyone could have made a piece any closer to the original than I did as you can see from the pictures. This is a great example of the type of custom work (or restoration work) that I can do, which leads me to the second half of this article. 

My Favorite Engagement Ring

I've been getting a lot of gents in lately asking for custom engagement rings.  I've talked about custom work before in a number of other blog articles but I'd like to go over a few things again.  I have a lot of people coming in with pictures on their phones of pieces that their significant others have posted on their Pinterest page or something similar.  A good deal of the pictures look nothing at all like what I normally make up.  Mind you, this isn't always a problem as my skills (see the first half of this article) are pretty broad.  However if someone is looking at a specific, unique design and that is exactly what they want I will not make it up for two reasons.  The first is that there are copyright issues involved and I will not break copyright.  Whether or not a copyright sign is attached to a picture, unique designs are given copyright the moment they are created.  That's the law.  No one should be copying my designs and I'm not going to copy theirs.  The second reason is that even if I make up something similar to the picture it will never be exactly the same (actually I can't legally make it exactly the same) and it will not be what the picture is.  If someone wants a specific design then you should go to the company that makes that design and buy it from them.  Additionally you should consider that I will always be more expensive because I'm starting from scratch and the company who made the thing probably has a mold already made up for it. 

Now if you are bringing me in a series of photos to show me the general style that she likes, I'm happy to look into making up something with a similar feel.  But it's not going to be the same and, again, since I'm starting from scratch it's going to be more expensive than most of the existing designs.  But you should also remember that while every piece I make up is going to adhere to the same exacting, high quality standard that I insist upon, pieces that are similar to what I already make are going to be more personalized than something that looks a whole lot like a commercially made piece out there.  So if you haven't shown your significant other my website and blog, think about doing that to see if there is anything I do that she might love.  If she's fixated on a halo ring, unless you want some unusual gemstone (like a magnificent purple sapphire---or yes that great alexandrite), I'm probably not the best place to start.

Another Reason to Shop Small

Freshwater pearl and pink sapphire squid pendant

I was reading the Boston Globe on Saturday and one of the front page articles was about how many people have been affected by data breaches in the last year.  More than 1.3 million (yes million!) people had their personal information stolen through data breaches.  But here's the great deal if you shop at a small bricks and mortar shop like mine.  Nothing can ever be stolen!  The only customer information we keep on our computers is your name, address, phone number and email---all of which are readily available on line to anyone.  We don't have social security numbers, credit card numbers, passwords or anything like that.  If you phone in an order and we take a credit card number from you it never goes into the computer.  It gets used and shredded promptly. 
We also only have one credit card terminal and it's kept behind my cases so no one could possibly install a skimmer on it. 

So just in case you were needing another reason to shop at a small shop like mine, today this seems to be one of the best ones!

Happy Valentine's Day!

18k pink and yellow gold heart pin with ruby

There are two really good reasons why you should give jewelry as a Valentine's Day gift.  The first is that you don't get fat from jewelry!  No matter what, when you get on the scale on February 15, even if you're wearing your new present, you will weigh the same as you did the day before. 

The second is that jewelry doesn't wilt and die a week after you get it!  I guarantee this.  Ten years from now it will still be alive and functional (unless you're like Morticia Addams and you've saved the dead roses for that long). 

But if you absolutely must give roses for the holiday how about considering some like this:

22k roses and garnets

I'm just saying...............