Madison’s Jewelry to close up shop, but the work continues

STANWOOD — It’s been 44 years of gold dust and diamonds for Robert Madison.

The good-natured, detail-oriented jeweler has spent the past 20 years of his career in Stanwood, where he owns Madison’s Jewelry at 8701 271st St. He had a few different locations downtown before moving to his current shop about a decade ago.

Saturday is his last day of business there. It’s been a good run, but things have changed, he said. He’s an old-fashioned, face-to-face kind of guy but jewelry sales have moved online.

“This is a sign of the times, with the Internet shopping,” he said. “My business has been older people who didn’t do the computer thing. I just haven’t been able to pick up the younger generation.”

He still plans to work as a jeweler, but without the Stanwood storefront. He’s debated opening a small shop in Mount Vernon, where there tend to be more shoppers, but he’s leaning toward starting traveling clinics, he said. He has a portable cart with all the supplies he needs to polish and repair jewelry on the go at grocery stores or other businesses between Marysville and Bellingham that would host him for a day at a time. Customers with warranties on jewelry he’s crafted or fixed in the past would be able to come to the clinics to get any repairs they need.

Madison started making jewelry when he was 19 years old. He’d just gotten laid off from a job at the telephone company. His girlfriend at the time told him her friend’s boyfriend was making jewelry and she thought Madison would be much better at it.

She was right.

“I made my first ring and gave it to her with love,” he said. “She turned around and sold it that same day and said, ‘Make some more, we’re on to something.’ ”

Since then, he’s worked all over the country and spent some time setting stones oversees in Japan and Australia. He would set several hundred gems a day. He traveled like that for eight years.

“I guess I was an international diamond setter,” he said. “Isn’t that outrageous?”

His most influential stop during his early years as a jeweler was in Denver, where he worked for five years alongside Karl Knapstein. Knapstein was a fourth-generation German jeweler who shared his time and knowledge, more of a father than a boss, Madison said. They would work 10 or 12 hour days to finish projects.

Jewelry making is delicate, detailed work, especially setting stones. The prongs that hold a gem have to be precisely notched and shaped to fit the stone, and no two gems are alike. Madison cuts each prong to fit the different facets, bends the metal around the gem and then cuts and rounds it off so the jewelry won’t scrape skin or snag on clothing.

“Not all stones feel the same when you set them, so you have to physically learn the feel of each stone,” he said. “A jeweler who sets diamonds usually breaks two to three hundred stones before they get the feel of it.”

Diamonds are hard gems, but they’ll chip if not handled correctly, he said. He broke his fair share when he was working with Knapstein.

“Whenever I’d do that, he would go ‘whap!’ on my knee with his hammer,” Madison said. “And then I’d limp over and get another stone.”

Madison moved to Camano Island in 1985 and opened his shop in 1995. He’s done mostly jewelry repair and custom work.

Cherie Bullock stopped by Thursday to wish him well.

“He’s a great designer,” she said. “I always ask for pieces to be made that I have no idea how to make them, and he makes my visions.”

Madison crafted a mother’s necklace for Bullock to give to her pregnant daughter. He set her grandma’s opal into the new necklace. Her daughter was delighted, Bullock told him.

Madison has repaired countless heirloom pieces of jewelry and set family gems into new rings for the next generation.

“There’s gratification in that, in taking something old and maybe worn out and putting it back on someone’s finger,” he said. “I feel I will never die as long as there’s a piece of the jewelry I made still alive and well.”

Brenda Finsen used to work in Madison’s shop as a saleswoman. She visited Thursday to wish him a happy retirement.

She’ll miss having a jewelry store in Stanwood, she said, but she hopes he has some time to go fishing and relax a little now. Madison has a grown son in Austin, Texas, he wants to visit more, he said.

Finsen and Bullock plan to come to Madison for their jewelry repairs no matter where he goes after closing the store, they said.

“He has repeat customers all the time,” Finsen said. “Everybody says, ‘I gotta go see Robert. My ring broke.’ He’ll be missed for sure.”

Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com