Kit Kuhn has been designing and selling jewelry since age 13

The Peninsula Gateway July19,2000 page 9D
Jewel of a Gig Harbor business shining for 12 years
by Shirley Walston

Kit Kuhn, owner of Kit, A Jeweler Designed for You, took a class in jewelry design when he was in seventh grade. Jewelry has designed his life ever since.  At 13, he had his own sales tax license and three stores that carried his work. “I would sell rings for $9, “Kuhn said, holding one of his early designs, a wide silver band with inlaid turquoise, “They’d sell them for $18>” Soon he and his teacher: Jenny Poe-Quigley, began attending jewelry shows together. “She was lots of fun,” Kuhn said, “She had lots of energy. They bought cabochons like turquoise and coral. He designed and made rings in his bedroom, “but it was years before my parents allowed me to have a torch in the basement.” I was somewhat of a loner,” he said,” I always asked for tools for my birthday. Kuhn attended three high schools and a community college, some of them simultaneously. He used their equipment and drew knowledge from teachers wherever he could find them. Ten years later, he started workings in gold, then finally in faceted stones. Kuhn won a contest and a scholarship, trained in Sweden and the college of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, training under 10 different jewelers. Kuhn’s family had a little trouble with the fact that he didn’t attend a traditional college. His grandfather was a Harvard graduate and his father a business consultant.

“Dad thought I’d never make a living ad a jeweler,” Kuhn said. “Now he’s glad I did it.” When he moved to Gig Harbor he answered a newspaper ad that offered free room and board in exchange for watching kids three days a week. He took the job as “Mr. Mom.” “Ron and Debra Ellis moved their car out of the garage so I could make jewelry every day,” he said.

Kuhn sold his work in shows and fairs. Gillman Village, Bellevue Mall, Pioneer Square and several shops in Gig Harbor carried his work. “During elections, I stood at the Post Office and passed out his brochures.” It worked. In 1988, he opened Kit, A Jeweler Designed for You. He said he’s worked 70 hours a week ever since. “You can do whatever you want in life if you really, really work at it,” he said. Twelve years of hard work has paid off. Today he sells nearly $400,000 worth of jewelry a year. “That’s a lot for handmade jewelry,” he said, “It took 12 years to make the jewelry that’s in this store.”

Somewhere in the middle of those 12 years, Kuhn had time to marry the former Kathy Chopp. The couple has two children and lives so close that they can walk to work. Kathy Kuhn and longtime friend Rich Langhorn also help in the jewelry shop.

Another couple brought in an heirloom diamond worth $45,000. “We ask what they want to spend,” he said. “Most wedding rings are between $2,000 and $8,000. The biggest thing is we stress quality.” He said most stores tell you how much to spend on wedding rings. “They want you to buy what’s in the case because it’s easy. But who am I to tell you what to spend?”Kuhn stocks diamonds up to 2.5 carats and sells about 10 sets of wedding rings a month. Eighty-five percent of what he carries is custom-ordered. A third of Kuhn’s business is wedding rings. “I want everyone to have a good piece of jewelry,” he said. “I try to tell people t drop in size rather than drop in quality.” Thursday, he was creating a ring a man had special-ordered. “We carve the wax ourselves,” he said, “Then we cast it.” When the wax had been melted out of the mold, there was a hole in the plaster the shape of ring. The plaster is inside of something called a crucible. It’s a cylindrical piece of metal the shape of a three- inch candle. On one end, there is a hole to throw the flame into. An ordinary baggie held $4,000 worth of shiny droplets of pure gold. Kuhn calculated how much pure gold he’d need for the ring. In a jiffy, he had the gold and alloy melted with a small torch. The liquid gold looked thick, shiny and positively rich. It moved like mercury does, like one piece. Kuhn added centrifugal force, causing the liquid gold to spin into the mold. After only a few minutes, the ring was set. He let the crucible sit, and then used tongs to plunge it into a bucket of water, which sputtered to the floor. “If you cool it too fast, it might crack,” he said. Then he took the crucible into the bathroom, grabbed a toothbrush and started scrubbing the plaster off.

The ring that remained looked like it had been dug up from the depths of the Titanic. The rings will be cleaned up, then the shape of the Lake Tahoe mountain range will be fabricated onto it. Tiny tributaries will be added. This $1,200 cast and fabricated ring is just one of the special orders Kuhn creates on a daily basis. He makes things as unique as a square golden double-sided pendant. A Brazilian quartz fish swims through seaweed in the center. As if that weren’t original enough, gold circles were added as air bubbles. An opal as brilliantly blue as the waters of Tahiti awaits a special design. Every display case in Kuhn’s shop contains such gems- everything from silver gecko pendants to an incredibly lustrous 1.07-carat Burmese ruby with a $4,500 price tag. Kuhn began in silver 27 years ago. Today, he works with gold, sapphires, diamonds, pearls and an abundance of creativity.