For the past 13 years we have been using a track light system for illuminating our jewelry, and this track system consists of roughly (thirty) 75-watt flood lights. Being in an age where energy costs are up, and spending almost $4,000 a year on just the cost of running the track lights, (not to mention running the air conditioning to cool the building down due to the heat of the lights) we had to make a change.

After researching all of our options, we decided to replace the lights we are currently using with LED lights. I was skeptical at first, seeing that these LED lights only had an output of 300 lumens per light, as opposed to the 750 lumens per bulb we were used to, so I ordered only 2 lights. Plus they were ...

2007-2008 has been a time of change for Wexford Jewelers. Not only have we completely revamped our landscaping, we just painted our building! We’ve stared at mottled orange & brown brick for so long, the soft gray structure sitting at the corner of Mitchell & River Streets is almost unrecognizable!

Add to that new paint inside, new concrete sidewalks (at least on two sides of the building), a new design studio inside, a new and huge repair/finishing shop, this new and awesome website, and this place seems suddenly like a lovely chrysalis, a shining butterfly emerging from a dusty cocoon.

I will post photos later of the new paint job/garden/sidewalk. The painters are not quite done as o ...

Over the years, I have repaired every kind of jewelry there is. And it was brought to me in every possible condition. In doing so, it has taught me a lot about how to properly maintain my precious, not so easy to replace, baubles. I am now passing on a practical list of do’s and don’ts for you read, and implement. If properly maintained and checked, your jewelery will last for generations to come.

DO’S:

Do get your jewelry regularly checked by a jeweler. Every 6 months to a year.

Do take off your rings every month and clean them, if not by a jeweler, then yourself. A solution of hot water, Windex, and a couple drops of dish soap, works wonders. Soak for 5 to 10 minutes, ( no long ...

I’ll always remember my first time at the wheel. I was a short, scrawny, 9 year old girl with straggly, brown hair. I did not know what I was doing.

Zzz… zzz…zzz, went the hard, abrasive wheel, as I gouged deep, rough valleys into the thin, silver, practice ring, that was just cast and cleaned. Trying to take down the casting sprue. Then the ring slipped off the wheel and my finger received the same treatment. Zzz… into my soft, not yet calloused finger tip. I received a little instruction from my teacher, my dad. He showed me how to firmly but gently, roll the ring into the wheel to keep the nice ...

The year is 1,200 BC. A man sweats in front of a furnace, a huge pair of bellows resting in his scarred hands. Beside him is a scorched earthen bowl packed hard with sand. He has spent hours shaping a plug of beeswax into an intricate crescent moon shape for a wealthy woman. Afterwards he tamped clean sand around the wax, delicately at first, then harder and harder as the shape became covered.

He places the bowl into the fire, resting it against an earthen wedge so that it is tilted sideways. The heat burns his face and brings tears to his eyes, but he is used to it now. The fire wanes and the man works the bellows again, forcing oxygen into the blaze with swift and powerful strokes. The small plug of beeswax, visib ...

Gold at nearly a thousand US dollars an ounce. Platinum over two thousand. Silver, incredibly enough, at twenty dollars an ounce.

Did we honestly think we would see these prices this early on?

The falling value of the dollar coupled with instability in the markets has set this industry on its ear. Then we add low mine production to the mixture, and suddenly a reachable commodity becomes just one more thing that’s harder for the common man to acquire. We’ve had a spike like this before, but not with such a steady upward trend. Is it going to stay this way? Who knows. I, for one, think it will.

Rather than bemoan the price- which I can do nothing about- I want to address the situation ...

A couple stands across the case before me. Simple, hardworking, salt of the earth people. The woman has just had her ring painstakingly repaired by us- worn prongs rebuilt, a missing side diamond replaced, the surface refinished. She gazes it at it in wonder,

“I’ve never seen it so bright!” She exclaims, “It must have been extra dirty. It’s as beautiful as the day we were first married!”

“So are you.” Her husband says softly behind her, barely audible.

-Cue heart melt here-

The woman blushes a bit, glances at his own matching band, and grimaces.

“Oh, honey look at yours. It’s so dirty compared to mine no ...

Child Labor laws notwithstanding, my dad made us all work in the shop from a very early age. Sometimes it was good fun- learning to melt the wax and playing with tiny Austrian Crystals were things any child would enjoy. Other times it was not so fun, but we survived.

My right ring finger, however, almost didn’t.

The year was 1991. I was thirteen, in my first semester of full homeschooling, and my dad had found a great advantage to his daughters not being away at school for 7 hours a day: he could have us help out in the store nearly full time.

I would come to work with him in the morning, my hair up in a banana comb most days. We would park in back of the little strip mall on Speedway Boulevard in ...

One of my duties entails serving the customers who walk through our door.

It was a normal day, and I was in the process of photographing rings to upload to our website. Around 11:30, a lady walks through the door, and almost instinctively, I smile and say “hello there”. As I get up from my station where my photography white box is, I notice a hand full of gold. This lady loved her jewelry, and loved to show it off as well.

Whenever someone walks through our door, we like to offer to clean their rings in our ultrasonic cleaner. Not only does it give them an excuse to walk around our cases, it gives them a sense of getting something nice even if they didn’t buy it. Like getting your car washe ...

The woman standing in front of me is regal and beautiful, even at middle age. After 28 years of marriage, her husband is leaving her. She mentions it quietly, ashamed of her newly single status. Her rings sit in front of me, resting top-down on the black velvet pad that I’ve just pulled out. The symbolism is staggering to me- funereal and final. I am about to melt the rings down, reforming the gold into a shape that is not a wedding band. There are a few small diamonds in the engagement ring, diamonds that carried her down a white-decked aisle so very many years ago. She has never asked for more than the simple sparkling stones on her hand, and never received any more. To these diamonds, I will add the birthstones of ...