Jewelry store

“ These latter are compelled by law to keep a sign conspicuously displayed, announcing the fact that their wares are imitation, and any one found selling imitation for real is, I understand, severely punished. The imitation jewelry stores are very attractive, and it is really quite remarkable to what perfection the art is carried. Imitation of diamonds, made from polished rock-crystal, which will retain their brilliancy for some months, mock coral, painted sets, imitation gold bracelets, chains, necklaces, sleeve-buttons, and earrings, of every conceivable design, very prettily made. ”

“ Down to a vault, at the rear of the shop, the salesman led the way. Opening the vault door he nimbly slipped out two trays of exquisite yet eccentric Hindu jewelry.
“Now, let the excellency gloat over these,” begged the salesman, throwing out a bewildering array of rings, brooches, amulets, bracelets, neck chains and the like, set in a dazzling array of precious and semi-precious gems.
“How much is this chain?” asked Dave, picking up one of beautiful workmanship. ”

“ Streets are given up to shops of one kind. Thus there is the "Jade-Stone Street," entirely given up to the making and sale of jade-stone jewelry, which is very costly, a single bracelet of the finest stone and workmanship costing 600 pounds. ”

“ With these ornaments imitation stones in paste and glass, pearls, &c., are used, and it is remarkable that of late years some of the best designs, the most simple, appropriate and artistic, have appeared in imitation jewelry. It is only just to those engaged in this manufacture to state distinctly that their work is never sold wholesale for anything else than what it is. The worker in gold only makes gold or real jewelry, and he only makes of a quality well known to his customers. ”

“ So I wrote to the best jeweler and silversmith in Chicago, told him what I had for sale, and asked him to come and see the goods. He answered my letter in person, looked at the silver and made me an offer which I accepted. Then he asked for the jewelry, and I showed him what I possessed. It was beautiful, but not very valuable, the best pieces being a set of white cameos, necklace, bracelets, and brooch. Robert gave them to me the day before our marriage, and I had to bite my under lip as I laid them beside the silver. ”

“ Here is no glittering shop with ornaments and precious vessels in the window, as in a London street, but an archway or a booth of mud exactly like his neighbours'. The goldsmith himself is at work with his blowpipe at a little brazier, softening and shaping a piece of gold into a bangle for a customer. He is a busy man, for the country women bring him their silver to be made up into the ornaments they love, and he has always a store of ear-rings and bracelets to sell. ”

“ Neither dare dealers in galvanized watches or imitation jewelry sell it for gold. They are compelled to display the word "imitation" conspicuously upon their shop front and window; and really imitation jewelry is such an important article of trade, that as much skill is exhausted upon it as in the real article, and dealers vie with each other in producing splendid imitations, some of which are so good that [303] a purchaser may, while the article is worn in its "newest gloss," make a display for ten francs that in the real article would cost as many hundreds. ”

“ It is the little millinery shops where an engaging creature in [42] black and white simpers toward you and calls you, if you are of the eternal feminine, "my dear;" the jewelry shops where the lapidary rises from his lathe and offers a bit of craftsmanship; the rare galleries that run from old masters to modern etchers; specialty shops, filled top to bottom with toys or Persian rugs, or women's sweaters, or foreign magazines and books, that render to Fifth avenue its tremendous cosmopolitanism. These little shops make for personality. ”

“ MY opportunities of surveying the German jewellery market, and of making acquaintance with the ins and outs of the jewellers' business, have been limited; but it is certain that both are flourishing; at least, the German jewellers do not look as if they starved! Moreover, the demand for precious ornaments seems to increase year by year, and the display in the jewellers' windows grows more and more luxurious, as is the case with most other businesses. Nobody will store superfluous and unmarketable goods, least of all the jeweller, who is always a business man. ”

“ One box, strongly strapped with bands of brass, and opening by a lock of most complicated mechanism, was filled with articles of jewelry, not only such trinkets as men affect to wear in shirt-studs and watch-pendants, but the costlier objects of women's wear ”

“ Every woman of taste—regardless of wealth or social status—is a collector of jewelry. Whether the pieces she has gathered be costume jewels or precious ones, each woman who knows the importance of appearance has her treasure chest. And those who can afford individual workmanship, and jewels constructed in personal design, select their jeweler at least as carefully as their decorator or their milliner. ”

“ A woman may just window-shop along the avenue, then drift into a reliable store. She finds a jewel she likes and her husband does not object to the price.
With a remodelling project, there are many more concerns. From the purely practical point of view, the woman must be sure the jeweler is thoroughly reliable. He has to remove the gems from their setting. He must clean, count, weigh, and register them, and see that she gets the same stones back. The jeweler must be not a salesman but an experienced craftsman, able to recognize the possibilities inherent in the stone. ”

“ A Green Hand
“I shall never again employ any but experienced salesmen, who thoroughly understand the jewelry business,” said a Houston jeweler to a friend yesterday.
“You see, at Christmas time we generally need more help, and sometimes employ people who can sell goods, but are not familiar with the fine points of the business. Now, that young man over there is thoroughly good and polite to everyone, but he has just lost me one of my best customers.” ”

“ Jewelry of such beauty and fashion as would grace the best stores of Paris is here offered for sale, beside the cheapest ornaments manufactured by the bushel-basketful at Birmingham, England. Choice old silverware is exposed along with iron sauce-pans, tin dippers, and cheap crockery—variety and incongruity, gold and tinsel, everywhere side by side. ”

“ The wealth displayed in the shops of London is suitable to the metropolis of the world. In one you see heaps of silks, of the richest and most splendid patterns; and if you pause to note their infinite variety, you become at last surfeited and sickened with mere luxury. In another shop you see every species of jewelry—and rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, cameos, and intaglios, are so rife, that you pass on, content that they are not yours. ”

“ A general atmosphere of clean, well-tidied, wide street; a flood of mellow, tempered sunshine; gentle, genteel breezes. In the rear, the show windows of two shops, a jewelry establishment on the corner, a furrier's next to it. Here the adornments of extreme wealth are tantalizingly displayed. The jeweler's window is gaudy with glittering diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls, etc., fashioned in ornate tiaras, crowns, necklaces, collars, etc. From each piece hangs an enormous tag from which a dollar sign and numerals in intermittent electric lights wink out the incredible prices. ”

“ A local jewelry shop, famous in the trade the world over, looks like a miserable little tinker’s den, where a dozen men and boys, all with more or less African blood, work at dirty old worn and smoked benches. About them is a wilderness of junk where cigarette butts, gold nuggets, old iron tools, gold wire, and worthless odds and ends lie scattered and tumbled together with diamonds of all sizes, cut and uncut, old tin tobacco-boxes containing fortunes in diamonds and precious stones of several species wrapped in dirty bits of paper. ”

“ A slender girl of seventeen years impersonated a jewelry peddler and gold watches, chains, bracelets, rings and jewels of all descriptions were fastened securely to her dress and on the edge silver teaspoons were crossed as a trimming. Much amusement was created by a necktie vender, whose costume consisted of a black shirt, black cutaway coat and a gorgeous tie. On a hardware merchant's tray plebeian tin girdles shone with as undaunted a lustre as silver, while brass, steel, copper and wire kitchen utensils made a brave display. ”

“ Jewelry firms issue tempting lists of their wares; china and glass dealers try to secure buyers by offering alluring pages of pictures, many of them in color; dry goods houses send out photographs of suits, hats, and clothing of all sorts. ”

“ All is stir and bustle. Life and business are rampant, and yet, strange to say, no one seems to be in any special hurry. Everything is done in a leisurely manner. The number of handsome stores and the elegance of the goods displayed in them are remarkable, while the annual amount of sales in these establishments rivals that of some of our most popular New York and Boston concerns in similar lines of business. One may count forty first-class jewelry establishments in a short walk about town. There is hardly a more attractive display in this line either in Paris or London. ”

“ AGENTS $10 a day at home selling LIGHTNING PLATER and plating Jewelry, Watches, Tableware, Bicycles, etc. Plates finest jewelry good as new, and on all kinds of metal with gold, silver or nickel. No experience. Anyone can plate the first effort. Goods need plating at every house. ”

“ These embrace the dealers who sell the original pearls in lots, those who clean and treat them, others who drill and string them, and others again who handle them in setting jewelry of all kinds, and also the large number of dealers throughout the entire world who sell either the jewelry or the unmounted pearls. ”

“ Just enough of the technical has been provided to make the new gem book a vade mecum for students of gem minerals and for the army of jewelers in the United States, as well as their fellow-craftsmen and merchants in all English-speaking places. The art and industry of mounting gems is somewhat elaborately covered, especially as exemplified in the work of students at technical schools and the many unattached workers in jewelry designing and making who form a part of the Arts and Crafts movement. ”

“ Men have ever been fond of personal ornaments, and there have been but few nations since the flood, [212] which have not encouraged the jeweller in some way or other. In modern times, the art has been greatly improved. The French, for lightness and elegance of design, have surpassed other nations; but the English, for excellence of workmanship, have been considered, for ages, unrivalled.
31. In the United States, the manufacture of jewelry is very extensive, there being large establishments for this purpose in Philadelphia, and in Newark, N. J., as well as in several other places. ”

“ The producer of silver work only manufactures silver ornaments, and so on throughout the whole class of plated goods.
It is the retailer who, if he is unprincipled, takes advantage of the ignorance of the buyer and sells for gold that which is in reality an imitation, and which he bought as such. The imitations of old styles of jewelry which are largely sold in curiosity shops at foreign places of fashionable resort are said to be made in Germany, especially at Munich. ”

“ When an article was wanted, it generally had to be hunted for, unless it chanced to fall under the immediate range of vision of salesman or customer, while the crowded shelves and counters presented a bewildering array of tinware, glassware, patent medicines, clocks, trimmed hats, churns, gaudy neckwear, cheap clothing, mock jewelry, hair-oils and colored perfumes put up in glass bottles of seductive shapes, along with sundry articles great and small necessary to the needs and adornment of the people of the surrounding country. ”

“ Not so long ago it would scarcely have occurred to any one in the jewelry industry that there was any importance to be attached to the opinion of the public on the essential or non-essential character of the jewelry industry. To-day, on the other hand, jewelers find it a profitable investment to bring before the people the fact that table silver is an essential in modern life, and that without watches “the business and industries of the nations would be a sad chaos.” ”

“ Soon he discovered the sheen of precious metals, the sparkle of gems. The progress of adornment, from ancient Egypt to the twentieth century world, has been marked by the further discovery and refinement of metals and the design of jewels. Synthetic [19] gems and costume jewelry have given to every woman opportunities once limited to the wealthy few; the principles applicable to the wearing of costly jewels are the same for their less expensive cousins. And the pattern of the quest of personal beauty is in line with the general pattern of human evolution. ”

“ Debonaire and full of life and fun, she moves, cheery and happy, on her way to supper. Her bright eyes flash sidelong glances at the jeweler’s windows as she passes. Some day she hopes to see upon her white finger one of those sparkling diamonds. Her lips curve in a meaning smile. She is thinking of the handsome, finely-dressed man who comes so often to her counter in the big store, ostensibly to buy her wares. How grand he is, and what eloquent eyes and a lovely mustache he has! She does not know his name; but, well, she knows that he cares a little for the goods she sells. ”