Cooped up in your little office all day, peering through a magnifying glass, you figure your job couldn't get more boring. Well, that's not what being a jeweler is about at all.
Wink Jones owns a small jewelry retail outlet in Boise, Idaho. The funny thing is, he doesn't have one boring story. Here's an example.
Jones was having a regular day at the office. His daughter came in to help him with some paperwork and he saw an old client to the door after a consultation. The client wanted Jones to fly down to Arizona with him and appraise a package of diamonds that he had just bought.
"He had spent $57,000 on a package of diamonds that was supposed to be an investment. He still owed $18,000 more, so he was paying $75,000," recalls Jones.
"I had the unfortunate privilege of telling him that, if he wanted to spend $18,000 more, I could give him six diamonds that were better than the ones he was buying -- for the $18,000 he still had to spend."
Basically, Jones was explaining to his client that the so-called investment was a huge ripoff. The package of diamonds wasn't even worth $18,000, never mind $75,000!
Jones's client wasn't the only one getting cheated, though. There were others, and the FBI was already on the case.
"As it turns out, I ended up as one of the key witnesses in a federal trial against the investment house that was selling these diamonds as investments," Jones says.
His client was well off. In fact, the man even had his own private airplane, which he piloted himself. Jones and some others were to leave Thursday morning to fly to Arizona for the trial.
"The court called me on Wednesday to tell me that I wouldn't be appearing until Monday, so I stayed home while they all left in my client's plane the next day. He flew it into a storm, the plane crashed and everyone aboard was killed.
"I went down and testified the next week for my client, who was no longer there. They did get a conviction, though. The head honcho got 15 years in prison.
"Jewelry is more dangerous than I thought," says Jones, reflecting on the experience.
Jones likes his operation. It's a small business. He does no advertising and relies on word of mouth to bring in customers. When it comes to making or designing jewelry, Jones passes the work on to others, preferring to stick to appraisals and customer service.
He was once offered a job in New York City for double what he makes in Boise, Idaho, but he says money isn't the only issue to consider.
"It was a quality of life decision," he explains. "I only work three out of every four weeks and it's my own business." He says the easy pace allows him free time to enjoy his family.
Skilled artist Irene Blueth got into making jewelry when she was in school. She has enjoyed success in the field, and her skills are entirely self-taught. "I just figured things out, got books from the library and asked people," she says.
"I got into jewelry-making from doing things with wire and beads -- very simple, low-tech. It was a nice way to be able to travel around and take my work with me."
She did that for a few years and eventually found herself doing more skilled work, which required more tools.
Blueth lives on the West Coast. "I don't need to be in a city for what I'm doing," she says. Blueth has been making her living with jewelry for years.
"It's great. You can work for yourself. You can work your own hours. It doesn't take up a lot of space to do jewelry-making," she says. "It's the kind of thing where you also have to put some energy into marketing."
She's done a little bit of everything -- repairing jewelry, making custom-ordered jewelry, selling through stores and attending craft fairs. "You have to be flexible and willing to do a lot of different things at the same time. And don't expect a regular salary."
Charles Vanden Berg Jr. has been into jewelry since he was 12. He says the diversity within the industry is part of its attraction for many jewelers.
"A scientist will tell you about the chemistry or the constant challenge of mathematics in gems. A historian may love how gold and gems are interwoven into the fabric of history. Cleopatra had a remarkable collection of amber, for instance.
"A people person," Vanden Berg Jr. continues, "will love the interaction they get on the sales floor with customers. It's such a pleasure to work with people who are celebrating some of the happiest moments of their lives -- marriages, anniversaries, having kids, or just satisfying a personal desire.
"Artists and mechanics find it very satisfying to work with the metals that we use. There is nothing like shaping a piece of gold into a creation painted with vibrant gemstones."
Here, Vanden Berg Jr. could be describing Jason Hampton, a young but upwardly mobile designer and craftsman. Hampton has done well in the jewelry manufacturing trade. He started out in high school in a metal art class.
"I just liked playing with torches," says Hampton, explaining his early fascination with the craft. "The school had all the equipment for making jewelry -- kilns, centrifuges and buffers. I carved a ring out of wax and cast it myself for a girlfriend."
Hampton sanded and buffed the ring, but he couldn't get a shine on it and no one knew how to use any of the equipment. "In my school, they made us cover our textbooks with brown wrappers. I was bouncing the ring off of my book when I noticed that the brown paper was actually putting a shine on it."
Hampton wrapped a file in the paper and got a good polish on his ring. Since then, he's been an innovative designer, driven by his love for working with the materials.
Today, Hampton works with a considerable amount of freedom at a California jeweler's shop.
As Vanden Berg Jr. suggests, Hampton is just one in a variety of different kinds of people who work in the jewelry trade. "It's peopled with the widest range of personalities you can imagine," says Vanden Berg Jr. "But each is captured by the seductive metals and glistening gems that make this industry. It's amazing."
Vanden Berg Jr. says all these different types of people are attracted to the industry for the same reasons: small shiny objects. That is by no means an insult. It's part of our humanity. Vanden Berg Jr. points out that psychologists have suggested we have some kind of deep down desire to adorn ourselves.
"This fascination with gems and precious metals goes back to the oldest recorded history," says Vanden Berg Jr. "More than likely, it existed long before we learned to scratch our story into rock."