As you walk through the shop the first thing you notice is the dust. It is easy to tell which tools get used every day and which do not. Dust has a memory that way. Unlike most workshops, however, the dust here is not a hindrance but a gold mine - literally. It is chock full of precious metals. As a result, every drain, vent, and workbench in the place is specially filtered to collect and store it.

“The last time we replaced the carpet, we got a ton of dust out of the old one we pulled up,” says Dustin Sholdt, one of the owners. “We cut it up into twelve inch squares and sent it to a refiner, and it pretty much paid for the new carpet.”

Sitting next to Dustin (known to friends as Dusty, appropriately enough) is older brother Brian Sholdt. Together they own and operate this shop, and it bears their name. They are proud of their dust, and rightly so. For over 75 years the Sholdt family has been making jewelry - and the dust that goes with it – in their unassuming Seattle area workshop. In four generations the business has grown from a repair bench to an internationally recognized design and manufacturing house for wedding and engagement rings, known simply as “Sholdt”.

Their work area is an intriguing blend of old and new. Rolling mills from the ‘30’s share floor space with modern laser welders. Old-fashioned pendulum scales see-saw next to digital scales accurate to one thousandth of a gram. There is a palpable sense of history. Every workstation bears the benchmark of hundreds of hands, and all the wooden cabinets and tool-handles glow with the patina of use. Many of the tiny folded gemstone papers still bear inventory dates from the late 1800’s.