I have 50 years of experience as a hand manufacturing bench jeweler. I am an authentic Goldsmith and Custom Order Jeweler making each of the pieces that you see in my portfolio by hand completely with photo documentation to illustrate my unique process used to produce that request or idea.
Many pieces pictured here have a photo series showing each step from drawing to reality.
I’ve never had to cast anything, nor bought manufactured cast parts to assemble, and then call it “custom” or “customized”. I make what I need from rolling mill hardened precious metals which has a huge impact on how long lasting and strong my finished pieces are. My wife and I had matching 7mm wide by 1-1/4 mm thick 18 karat yellow gold wedding bands I made that were drilled and sawed in 147 spots and were freehand carved interweaving vines and leaves that were so hard and strong that they lasted us 26 years without wearing out or even going out of round.
My unique Goldsmith skills were acquired at 19 years of age in Boston. First working as a Silversmith in Maine, and Cape Cod, with Fire-sign Silversmiths. I was later offered an apprenticeship with the Platinum worker, John Mulligan, of Mulligan & Hone Jewelers of Charles Street in Boston. I had previously gone to Boston from Ohio with a watercolorist scholarship for the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts…figuring I could make a better living as a Goldsmith than as a Watercolorist.
Encountering an opportunity in 1978 I operated Signet Custom Jewelers in Harvard Square Cambridge for 10 years and was given a color write up in the April 1987 Boston Sunday Globe by Mopsey Strange Kennedy.  Due to 2 sudden family deaths I returned home to Ohio in 1988 where I tried a shop for 5-6 years before I went to work as a special custom order jeweler for the Tiffany Trade Account store in Cleveland, Schreibman Jewelers for 9 years, until they closed right after 911. Following that I worked 13 years for King’s Jewelry of New Castle until retiring ….
This diversity of experience and apprenticeship training is part of why my work is unlike other makers in this country who are limited by academic training to doing only wax casting and Cad-cam wax carving that also gets cast..
I am offering my customers a chance to commission a custom handmade artwork using the unique self-taught Goldsmith skills of drilling and sawing, called saw-piercing, that I am uniquely combining with 3-D freehand carving which I do using traditional palm push gravers, producing pieces that are more detailed, are longer lasting, are impossible to cast, and are pieces not seen elsewhere….
I only use rolling mill hardened precious metal sheets that I then attach an exact-size millimeter graph paper drawing to. Next I drill, saw, and 3-D hand-carve, or sometimes I’ve even made multi-piece, multi-metal, multi-color gold assemblages, that are then carved…taking time dated macro-close up photos of each step.
Each piece is a signed, quality stamped, original artwork, with time-dated progress photos sent daily to my customer.
By allowing you to see your piece being made by my unique Goldsmith process from drawings to completion, you get exactly what you want and assurance that your piece is the only one like it anywhere. No molds.
In July 2012, MJSA Journal magazine did a 2-page article on me making a 5-piece assembled and carved replica to match the customers Grandmothers damaged 1-carat Art Deco diamond ring from 1910 using 16 pictures which they had me write captions for explaining my process.
Now I work for myself, I’m 70+, retired, and am a “Freelance” Goldsmith…still using my original West German jewelers tools from 1969…am the epitome of being a purely independent Cottage Industry, still pursuing my 10,000 year old Goldsmith art and striving toward the levels of workmanship of the ‘Old-Timers’…I’m getting closer with each piece.
I love the customer’s ideas and requests that I have fun figuring out how to create from scratch…
Each is always different from the last.