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Ray Starkey Opens The Jeweler’s Shop in Old Town Florissant
By Clint Baker
(Special to Independent News)
H. Ray Starkey is without a doubt a creative man – and he has many works of art to prove it.
Starkey is owner and manager of The Jeweler’s Shop located at 1080 rue Saint Francois (rear) in Old Town Florissant. The “(rear)” in that address means the store’s front door opens on an alley at the rear of the Edward Jones Building.
Starkey has been in the location only six months. “At first I was a bit concerned about being so tucked away.” said Starkey. “But I have learned if you offer a service folks need and want, they will find you.”
And so they have. Word-of-mouth and local advertising has produced a steadily growing flow of traffic through his alley store.
Starkey’s business card introduces him as a “watchmaker, jeweler, diamond setter and diamond remount specialist; a provider of unique handcrafted original jewelry.”
However, a small business card falls far short of describing the special gifts and talents of H. Ray Starkey.
For one thing, Starkey has the amazing ability to create beautiful one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry from available information ranging from a photograph to a “as best as I can remember” verbal description from the customer. Starkey considers himself a sculptor and says confidently, “If the customer can communicate to me what they want, I can make it.” As St. Louis baseball legend Dizzy Dean once said, “It aint’t braggin’ if you can do it.”
Some excellent examples can be seen in his display case:
o He created a charm of a favorite dog by reworking a wax model of a fox to make the mold.
o With only a fuzzy snapshot as a guide, he made a miniature vintage Chevy for a customer.
o Someone else wanted a leprechaun. “I saw a picture of one on a barroom wall on Saint Patrick’s Day and sketched it,” said Starkey. The tiny golden sprite that resulted looks exactly like the sketch.
o Out of his own fertile imagination he designed and created a gold key charm with a star on the end of it (a “star key”) for a Starkey family reunion.
Twenty-six years ago Starkey sculpted and produced a limited number of crucifixes primarily for family members. Starkey’s mother, grandmother and brother have been laid to rest with the crucifix in their hands.
Starkey’s creative expertise as a diamond remount specialist is frequently in demand. Once a customer came to him with an 11.5 carat diamond. “It was bigger than my thumbnail,” said Starkey, “much too large for any commercial ring mounting, so I custom made one for him. The customer wears the ring every day.”
Although H. Ray Starkey has years of experience in virtually every aspect of the jewelry and watchmaking business, including repair, restoration, purchasing estate jewelry, handling consignments, brokering and trading, his first love is designing and creating jewelry and giving new life to diamonds through remounting.
“That’s what I really like to do,” he says, “Customers can get personally involved in the design. They like that and so do I.”
He recalls one couple for whom he created a wedding band to fit with the bride’s uniquely shaped engagement ring. On another occasion he worked with a lady who brought in five separate gold rings that held a total of 48 tiny diamonds. Some of the items Starkey has created over the years have, for one reason or another never been claimed. One of these is a stunning three-carat diamond and sapphire ring which he sometimes keeps in his display case.
Starkey credits his early training and experience as a watchmaker for the “hands” to do the other work. He came to the trade as a fifteen-year-old. “I needed a part time job and got one as a watchmaker apprentice in my hometown,” he says. “I liked the business so I stayed in it. I must have fixed 20,000 to 30,000 watches.”
After graduating from high school and spending three years in the Army, Starkey returned to the jewelry business – this time to St. Louis where he spent 17 years pursuing his craft. In 1987, for personal and family reasons, the Starkeys returned to the Baltimore area where he stayed until this year.
In March of this year Ray and Cookie Starkey made the decision to return, not just to St. Louis, but specifically to Florissant. “When we were in St. Louis the first time we lived on St. Edwards Lane,” said Starkey. “We loved the neighborhood and the area, so our move back was in a very real sense a homecoming.’
“Our objective was to set up shop in Old Town. It just seemed a fit for our way of doing business. We think of ourselves as jewelers in the ‘old world’ tradition and we are very comfortable in our surroundings.” Most customers will agree that the Jewelers Shop is so much a fit with the Old Town ambience, it is almost impossible to believe they have only been there six months. (The Jeweler’s Shop phone number is (314) 831-9200.
