The Den

About A Chat with The Goldsmith Experience

What services does your business offer and what makes your business stand out from the competition?

We offer the general public the opportunity to be a goldsmith for a day. We teach step by step, easy to follow workshops where you can design and make your own jewelry. It's about opening the doors to getting your ideas out of your head and into your hands in a unique experience like no other. We teach our participants how to look for quality in jewelry, home care and about the precious metal industry so they can become knowledgeable consumers while getting hands-on creatively. What makes us different then the few others who offer this kind of educational experience is we keep our class sizes small and have a full consultation with each participant before the workshop starts, so again it's the Den helping *their* designs come to life, not just skill learning.

What was the inspiration to start or run this business?

Kristin Calkins, the Den's founder and head goldsmith, believes in helping others see their potential in the creative fields. The Den started as a studio haven for practicing goldsmith students where all their tools were available for rental and materials to use at a wholesale cost. Any artist starting out knows how expensive the beginning of your journey is acquiring everything you need... the Den's intention was to support new artists grow. It also served as a space where smiths meet their clients in a professional manner. Those clients would fall in love with the space and the creative buzz and beg to be hands-on in the project. That excitement lite the fire that is now our primary focus; helping people with no previous experience get hands-on with their jewelry pieces in a whole new way to show and tell their story.

What do you love most about your job?

Seeing people's reaction when we can say: "Yes, you can." There's a whole new level of sentiment and love towards anything when it's born of your own creativity and hard work. We see people grow in confidence from just the start to end of a workshop, seeing what they can accomplish.

What is the best reaction you've ever gotten from a customer?

We've have people in happy tears more times then I can keep track of... but the best of what we do is said very well by a wedding client's recent testimonial: "Honestly the experience of making our rings together and bringing our ideas to a finished product was priceless. For me the experience of being creative with [my fiance] was far more than creating the rings it was knowing that I want to spend the rest of my life with him during every adventure possible. We had so much fun making our rings and when we saw the finished products we were so happy because it was everything we wanted and much more."