I'm not sure how this works but I will give it a go anyway. You may find all sorts of spelling and grammatical errors but hey, I'm a jeweller..! My name is Rob and with my wife Jan we own a small independent jewellery store in the UK. We started some seven years ago after a bust up with my former employer (who shall remain nameless, for now) We set out to change the way jewellery was sold, the environment, display and the jewellery its self. Seven years down the line we are still looking to change the world because the world has caught up with us.
Just to let you know, my training started at the age of seventeen when real apprenticeships still existed. The apprenticeship was a serious, signed contract between employer and employee which lasted for five years. I worked in a dingy attic in SOHO, London where health and safety just didn't exist. We made and repaired fine jewellery for most of the Bond Street retailers. It was a fine experience and my first job after leaving school, wow, that is such a long time ago now. As apprentices we did just about everything, make the tea, to do that we had to move the cyanide pot, used to clean silver, from the tea making table, Fred the polisher used to leave it there to warm up, almost every day he got a rollicking from the directors when cyanide fumes engulfed the workshop, he wasn't the sharpest tack in the box. We ran errands, had the mickey taken out of us, swept up every day searching through the fag ends and pipe tobacco looking for any diamonds or tiny bits of gold that may have found their way onto the floor, then, just sometimes we sat down and learnt how to make and repair fine jewellery.
More about my wonderful days past some other time, or I will be here all day.
The purpose of this blog is at least two fold, one is for me to find out how all these techie things work and the other is to publicise the world of the Jeweller, as I know it. We love our work and see all types of fine jewellery as real treasure. To see how each piece is made, how the goldsmith or diamond mounter overcame design problems, how the piece sits on the wearer, there are so many interesting facets to the jewellery trade, you just never stop learning and every day something new happens. I would love you to post a comment and ask me some questions, lets have a dialogue..! Over to you..!
The Jeweller
3 comments:
Ah being an Apprentice - those were the days, evokes such……...dusty memories. Being given all the dirtiest jobs & being sent to the stores for striped paint, glass nails & a rubber hammer to knock em in wiv !
Why can't it be like that today - rigging miniature bombs to wake up the old engineers. Filling the old boys rolled umbrellas with torn up dockets. Gluing handsets on wall-phones & taking out the screw holding the cover on - where's all the fun gone !
Disappeared with age I spose.
Not all is lost, I was sent to the shop for a 'long weight' not long ago
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