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Business & Tech

Carving Out His Place in the World of Precious Stones

Jeweler Scott Verson, owner of Metal & Stone Design, has spent decades sharpening his skills, making all manner of custom-designed. fine jewelry.

Working by himself for hours at a time—doing things like carving wax and setting stones in his shop—doesn’t bother St. Louis Park jeweler Scott Verson.

“I like my alone time,” said Verson, who opened in 2000. He moved to his current location in St. Louis Park three years ago.

And yet, Verson’s favorite thing about his job is connecting with others.

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“The biggest reward I get is just working with people,” Verson said. “I guess with wedding rings—(they are) such a personal item. (People) sort of let you into their world for a little while.”

Verson doesn’t just do wedding rings, though. He makes earrings, pendants and more, like the diamond bezel he was working on for a customer’s watch. Seventy-five percent of Verson’s business is doing custom work like the bezel, while the rest of his time is spent doing jobs for local jewelry stores.

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Spurred by an affinity for working with his hands, Verson first took classes that incorporated jewelry in junior high and high school. He then took a couple more while in school at Minnesota State University, Mankato (then called Mankato State University).

“They were more like art classes where we’d make things, and the teacher was there if we had a question,” he said.

Despite those classes being far from a master-class environment, Verson was hooked.

“It was therapeutic, so to speak,” he said. “It was really fun to make gifts for people.”

After college he moved to Colorado. One day in 1983, he and a friend met a jeweler, and Verson mentioned that he had experience in the field. The next day the man hired him as an apprentice in his shop. While there, Verson did a lot of repair work, the other major facet of the jewelry industry besides custom-design work.

Over the following decade, Verson moved back to Minnesota, to Colorado again, and finally settled in Minnesota about 20 years ago. Along the way, he worked for various jewelry stores and companies, honing the craft.

In the early ’90s, he learned the intricacies of the lost art of wax casting, in which a wax mold is made of the piece, then attached inside a cylindrical-shaped flask called a pour cup. Next, plaster is put into the pour cup and left to harden. After the plaster hardens, the pour cup is put into an oven so the wax can melt away, leaving room for the metal of the finished piece.

Verson prefers this method because “it is easier to show to customers” than making jewelry straight from metal—a process called fabrication.

Whether filling sketchbooks with pencil drawings of a potential piece or carving wax molds to show customers—“the part I like best about my job”—Verson knows the importance of making sure people are satisfied, especially when they are buying something like jewelry, which can have a lot of sentimental value.

“The trick is making sure I know what they want,” he said.

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