Red Bank couple shows jewelry making is all about personal touch
RED BANK - For Joel and Jennifer McFadden, owners of The Art of Jewelry in Red Bank, jewelry is not a mass-production business.
Thirteen years ago, one of their first customers walked into their store looking for an anniversary ring.
“This beautiful lady walks into our store and wants a ring with diamonds all around,” Joel McFadden said. “She had been to several other jewelry stores around Red Bank with no success. She explained she was a size 4½ and wanted to know how much it would cost to get fitted for a band. In the industry, the standard size is 6½.”
The McFaddens jumped at the chance.
“As she sat in front of me, I gave her several options and price points with no hesitation,” McFadden said. "She asked me how I could do that when everyone else had turned her down. I told her I would make that piece of jewelry just for her and the only other question she had was what size diamonds to use because everything else was solved.”
She has been a client ever since.
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Joel McFadden is a third-generation jeweler. His grandfather and mother were both jewelers, and he fondly remembers being a part of their Charleston, South Carolina, business since he was six or seven years old.
“I would go to my grandfather’s store as a little kid and sweep the floor and run errands,” McFadden said. “When I was 12, my grandfather gave me a check for $80 and told me that I was an official employee for him and to be at work at 2:30 every day from then on.”
As a young man, McFadden took a couple of minor classes on jewelry manufacturing and the ins and outs of the business, but believes a lot of his training came from being on the job.
“Back in the '70s and '80s when we started, there wasn’t much education on this type of work,” he said. “Most of the college programs aren’t very effective, even now, and so you really can only learn to be a jeweler over a long period of time. There are so many different skills to do what we do that it takes half a lifetime to take it all in.”
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Joel and Jennifer, who grew up in Beachwood in Ocean County, met in North Carolina. "We actually met in a medieval recreation group called 'The Society of Creative Anachronism,'" Jennifer said. "It's like a social club that re-creates medieval history that includes costumes, martial arts, art work, poetry, music and all things medieval."
Joel was a high-ranking martial artist and Jennifer needed a coach. Their paths crossed, and they fell in love, got engaged and moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where Joel got a job offer in the jewelry business. After two years and some disagreements with his boss, he opened his own jewelry store in Greenfield in 2003.
"He was the jeweler, but he needed some help and I was able and willing, so I started answering the phones and greeting customers," Jennifer said. "I left my department store job at the time to pursue this business full-time. We went from just the two of us to 11 employees and 4,000 square feet."
Three years later, the McFaddens chose to move to Red Bank to be closer to Jennifer's aging parents, starting the store they have now. "We basically came back to be close to family and also because Red Bank was a popular area with a lot of promise," Jennifer said.
One of the key things the McFaddens learned early on was that being a jeweler meant more than being a creator.
“You have a physical object that you made for a person that has an emotional tie to it, whether it is an engagement ring or a wedding band or an anniversary ring or something that signifies a touching memory,” Jennifer said. “It is really rewarding.”
Joel has also been teaching the art of making jewelry for years.
"We are not in this business for the money,” he said. “About 15 years ago, a friend of mine started running a traveling seminar for jewelry design. I expressed to him that I was not very impressed with the teachers that he was employing. I gave him a list of the things I thought he was doing wrong and he offered me a teaching job, which I humbly accepted.
“That’s how I began my teaching career and the more I did it, the more I loved it,” he continued. “I have been a jeweler for so long, since 1972, and there are so many tools to the trade that I can teach to other aspiring jewelers. There are not a lot of people that have been doing what I have for such a long time. I feel that I have nothing but expertise to offer to my students and I am happy to pass that knowledge on to them.”
Running the business is a collaboration with customers.
“When a customer comes in, they will sit down with Jennifer, and discuss what they are looking for with her," Joel said. "From that point on, Jennifer will do all of the preliminaries, confirming whether it is a repair or something that has to be made from scratch.
“Customers can look at something that we have done in the past or they bring in pictures of what they are looking for more specifically,” Joel said. “Then, customers initiate a consultation and we will go through our own computer design program and construct that piece of jewelry down to the last detail. Everything just evolves from there.”
The McFaddens hope to grow the business, and Joel wants to do more teaching.
“I want to be more involved in education,” he said. “In the next five years, I want to have an online apprenticeship program. If someone wants to be a jeweler but can’t commute to a specific location, we can provide that service online. I already have a YouTube channel and that is just the start.”
The Art of Jewelry
Location: 64 White St., Red Bank
Website: www.jmdjewelry.com
Phone: 732-747-8877
Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.