by Mark Lurie

Matt Kaiser's 18K white and yellow gold fish pin/pendant with boulder opal, ruby cabochon, and flush-set diamonds.

For the six goldsmiths currently working at Jewelsmith, a custom- design shop in Durham, North Carolina, that was an offer too good to pass up. Ranging in age from 29 to 54, these are people from diverse backgrounds with varying levels of training and experience.

Collectively, they've worked all over the country, plumbing the depths while paying their dues. Self-taught journeyman Ken Weston worked out of a pawnshop before becoming an independent contractor. Art-school grad Phil Dismuke toured the country with a team of diamond-remount specialists. And Susan Panciera, a hobbyist-turned apprentice, spent four years doing production work for another goldsmith. “I was doing the same designs over and over again, and was getting a little burned out,” says Panciera, taking a break from filing a platinum bracelet to talk. She used to wander into Jewelsmith to look at the designs, and when she stopped by about two years ago, she learned of a job opening. Hired initially to do prep work for Dismuke, she soon was making jewelry to fill the same showcases she had so often stared into.

“It was a great step to come here and get to do more interesting pieces and have a free range,” says Panciera, who candidly admits she wasn't cut out to be self-employed. “I have skills as a goldsmith, but not as a businessperson. I've dreamt about it. Everybody's dreamt about it, I guess. But I find working for somebody makes everything so much easier.”

Travis Kukovich's opal ring

In the case of Jewelsmith, that somebody is store owner Linda McGill. Herself an award-winning designer, she now spends very little time at the bench, instead running the business, enabling her team of designers to create works that consistently dazzle her growing clientele.

On the day I arrive, McGill is helping out behind the counter with her gemologists and sales staff serving customers. I take the opportunity to look around her showroom. It's hard to pigeonhole this place. On the one hand, it's a custom-design house, where customers will sit down with one of the goldsmiths at a small table near the store's entrance, having a commissioned piece sketched out and priced for them. On the other hand, it's also a retail store, whose cases are filled with everything from straightforward gold wedding bands to elegant sapphire pendants or gypsy-style earrings with bold combinations of faceted and freeform stones.

And then there's the question of who exactly is the store's clientele. From what I can discern by looking around, it attracts a fairly broad cross-section of Durhamites, from old-money types to young professionals working in the region's booming high-tech industry, to students from nearby Duke University. And while clearly trending toward the higher end of the market, McGill and her staff make a point of not having an upscale attitude: the store will accept any kind of repair job, from restoring heirlooms to fixing a pair of glasses.

“When customers come in and have some sort of experience with Jewelsmith, very often I will hear, 'This is not like any other experience that I've had in a jewelry store,'” says McGill, joining me for a coffee. “And I think it has to do with the main vibe in here: Make the Customer Happy.”

18K gold and platinum ring with pink sapphire and diamonds by Phil Dismuke. Photo: Seth Tice Lewis.

CAREER BUILDING. Anyone who spends some time with her can see why she's ideally suited to customer service. Gracious and with a ready smile, McGill has a Southern charm that sets people at ease, making them comfortable in a store where some of the pieces cost, well, more than their house.

She picked up many of her people and business skills from her father, who used to bring her to work at the local construction company he owned. “It was kind of like Jewelsmith, only dirtier,” she says with a laugh.

Still, she never thought of herself as a businesswoman. Instead, she studied sculpture at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, taking some jewelry classes, as well.

“When I got out of college, I was a typical child of the sixties. I had no marketable skills at all. And I hadn't even considered that I really needed one,” she says. She traveled to Arizona, where she studied jewelry under Bob Winston, “casting about” before coming home. “I figured I'd be here for a couple of months and then I'd go somewhere else.”

Instead, she set up shop with two partners, doing repair work for jewelry stores throughout Durham. “They were getting more and more away from being service-oriented stores. They'd cut out their repair departments, and just wanted to sell,” she recalls. When her partners moved on, McGill wound up with the store, and changed its name to Jewelsmith.

For two years, she continued on alone, doing repair and custom work, moving the store several times in the process. She slowly began hiring people, one at a time, with each new addition joining her at the bench, at the counter, and generally helping run all aspects of the business. Over time, she stopped doing repair work for other stores, deciding to stick to retail.

Ring of boulder opal, channel-set diamonds, 18K yellow gold, and platinum, by Travis Kukovich; and two pieces by Phil Dismuke: a necklace of 18K yellow gold, boulder opal, emeralds, diamonds, and Akoya pearls, and earrings of 18K gold, crystal opals, and diamonds. Photo: Seth Tice Lewis.

“Basically, I was able to learn the business,” she says of this gradual evolution. “And one of the reasons the store looks a little different and is structured differently than other stores, is that I didn't have any experience with other stores. I had no idea how things are done, so I just sort of made it up.”

In the last 15 years, McGill estimates more than two dozen goldsmiths have worked for her, each bringing something new to the mix, and thus broadening the scope of what she could offer. “A lot of the people who come to work here wind up having a big impact on the store. One of the first goldsmiths I hired was a Polish refugee. He really changed the look of the jewelry. He could do designs that I couldn't do, so that added a new dimension to the store. And so I figured I'd hire goldsmiths who knew what they were doing and had a whole lot of experience and knowledge and talent,” she says.

“Pretty soon I realized, 'Gosh, I can have a store that basically does everything. All I have to do is find somebody to do it.'”

One thing that meant was hiring well-trained gemologists who could issue proper reports for stones, thus enabling her to carry more expensive materials. While still a major source of designer favorites such as tourmalines, garnets, spinels, and drusy stones like onyx and rainbow hematite, the store has also gained a reputation for carrying the more prestigious materials - bank breakers, such as large D-flawless diamonds or clean, pigeon-blood Burmese rubies.

“The store's just become a much more professional place,” she says. And I feel really good about everything that goes out the door. It's worth what people are paying for it, it is what we say it is, and it's beautiful.”

Pendant of 18K gold, diamond, fire opal, tourmaline, and citrine by Jewelsmith's Phil Dismuke. Photo: Seth Tice Lewis.

ARTISTIC NEEDS. About 10 years ago, McGill moved the store to its current location, on the ground floor of a suburban office complex just a few miles outside downtown. Since then, she's more or less stopped doing benchwork, preferring to view the store as her creation.

“Partly, I'm just outclassed by everybody in the store that does metalwork. They have better hands than I do,” she explains matter-of-factly. These days, she will mainly sketch a design and hand it off to be executed by someone else - lately, Susan Panciera, who fabricated McGill's recent award-winning platinum bracelet.

“Every once in a while, I'll sit down at the bench and all the goldsmiths will come around and say, 'Can I help you?' And they get this horrified look on their face. 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?'” McGill remarks, laughing.

Still, while she has plenty of help running the store - including three gemologists, four salespeople, and an office manager - there's no doubt who's in charge. McGill is the one who makes all the final decisions, from hiring staff to charting the store's direction.

Asked what she considers her greatest strength as a manager, she pauses before answering. “I think I understand the needs of artists,” she says, finally. Coming from an art background herself, she has cultivated a “hands-off” management style, imposing very few creative guidelines on her goldsmiths.

Necklace designed by Linda McGill of platinum, diamonds, and Tahitian pearls.

“The people who want to work have a lot of free range and a lot of opportunity and materials to do it. And I also encourage and practically demand doing competition pieces. And some people do and others don't. But very little do I involve myself in what they do. Occasionally I'll say, 'I really don't think you should set citrine with this $12,000 yellow diamond, it just doesn't make sense.' Not that I have to say that very often. Everybody knows that, but it does happen.”

Staying on budget is an abiding concern. Particularly when designing for stock, the jewelers have to balance the cost of a finished piece with the time it takes to make it. “To me, if I'm going to do something that's not real expensive, I'll try to keep its making down to about an hour or so,” says Phil Dismuke. “Just keep it simple. It's strange, but there are some things you can do in 30 minutes if you really set your mind to it which can be really beautiful.”

Of course, there are other business realities which anyone who works here has to accept. McGill prohibits her goldsmiths from competing with her by selling their own work outside the store. And while she tries to be flexible on issues such as scheduling, the nature of a retail business is such that she needs a more-or-less full staff on generally busy shopping days. And that means working Saturdays.

But these are tradeoffs. In addition to receiving a steady paycheck, Jewelsmith employees and their family members are covered with full health and dental insurance. They also receive two weeks paid vacation, along with annual or seasonal bonuses which are tied to the store's overall performance. Without giving specific numbers, McGill says that starting salaries for her goldsmiths are higher than the U.S. median salary for a benchworker - approximately $30,000, according to one recent survey. No one earns a commission for a sale.

“I think the big benefit of Jewelsmith is not that we make a lot more money than jewelers elsewhere, because I'm not sure that's the case,” says Travis Kukovich, who's worked here for nearly eight years. “The benefits are that we have a nice work environment, freedom, and other things that don't really add up to dollars.” For Kukovich, one major advantage is not having to run the business. “No one here wants to have the responsibility that Linda has. She has to deal with egos, she has to deal with the insurance guy, with the alarm guy, with all the little things that come up. We [goldsmiths] get to leave our work at the office, so to speak. I'd be lying if I said I'd never considered going off on my own. But frankly, I don't want to deal with the insurance guy. I want to design and make jewelry.”

Necklace of tanzanite and platinum, by Ken Weston.

DIVISION OF LABOR. There's another “perk” of the job which can't be measured in financial terms: the stimulation of working alongside other talented jewelry professionals. For the younger hands, it's an opportunity to learn from those with more experience, thus enabling them to grow in their careers. For veterans like Ken Weston, long accustomed to years of solitary work, it's a chance to feel a greater connection to others who share his passion.

“I came here looking for a team situation, where there was a lot of synergy. Where we bounced ideas off each other - hopefully ego free,” Weston says, a grin spreading across his face. “It does happen, believe it or not.”

It helps that there's more than enough work coming into the store to keep everyone busy. Amid a soaring regional economy, Jewelsmith has seen its sales quadruple in a few short years. One result of this growth has been increased specialization among the staff.

At present, Dismuke is the only goldsmith who routinely combines custom work with designing stock for the store (see “Playing to the Audience,” September, 1998). Panciera mainly designs stock pieces, while Weston, Kukovich, and Matt Kaiser concentrate on custom designs. Newcomer Dave Phelps, who works alongside the latter three, is currently paying his dues handling repairs.

Linda McGill's earrings of 18K yellow gold, South Sea pearls, and diamonds.

In dollar terms, custom work constitutes more than 70 percent of the store's business, mainly because such pieces tend to be the more expensive creations. But as McGill says, those who do custom work have an impact on everything you find in the display cases.

“I find that the input from customers during the one-on-one consultation stage keeps us on our toes and keeps us moving forward. We don't get stuck in our own little design niche. We get grabbed out of it by someone else's desire,” she says.

Custom pieces can take several days to complete, which cuts into time that might otherwise be spent designing purely from inspiration. Weston, for example, used to spend more time designing forged-wire creations around freeform stones (see “Playing the Parameters,” December, 1997). These days, he specializes in bridal creations, such as custom wedding bands and engagement rings.

“I do it well,” he says with a shrug. “What Jewelsmith is in the bridal sense fits right in with the mainstream, but the quality is so much higher that it becomes a thing of its own. And we each put our own artistic sense into the pieces that we design, so it is creative . . . but it is constrained down a particular path.”

One of the things he appreciates about Jewelsmith is the process of matching a customer to a particular designer. Anyone who wants to commission a piece is prescreened by one of the gemologists or sales staff, who helps them narrow down the kind of piece they want. Then, the design is turned over to the artist best suited to what they're looking for.

Phil Dismuke, Linda McGill, and Susan Panciera in the Jewelsmith studio.

Then, too, there's the opportunity to work with the most expensive materials, which poses a unique set of challenges. “Precision platinum work with diamonds and expensive colored stones is what I've been looking at and telling myself, 'Those people who do that are at the top of the jeweler's heap. They're the craftsmen who have really perfected their hands and that's why they get those kinds of jobs.' And now I come in every morning and I'm that guy.”

None of this is to say there aren't days when the job feels like a daily grind. And the more challenging the work, the more stressful it can be. But as Kukovich explains, this is one job where you get to see how much your work means to those who pay for it.

“A customer will come in and I'll look out the window from my bench and they're waving me out. Man, I love it! You have so many customers cry and say, 'God, this is perfect, exactly what I wanted.' You've gone through this painstaking process of designing and redesigning and looking for stones, but in the end the payoff is so sweet.”

Jewelsmith is located at Erwin Square, 2200 West Main St., Durham, NC 22705, and may be contacted by calling (919) 286-2990.