Jeweler turns simple metals into treasures
Published on Tue., May 9th, 2006
Lance Williams wanted to surprise his wife, Amber, with a one-of-a-kind necklace crafted from amber, a gem that is actually fossilized resin hardened over millions of years into a translucent gold color. So he went to one local jeweler he knew could design and make such a necklace — Peter Zacharias, owner of Goldmakers.
When she opened the box on her birthday and saw Zacharias’ creation, Amber recalls gasping out loud at the beauty of what she saw — a silver beetle wrapping itself around a rich gold amber stone — a stone that seemed to glow on its own.
“It was totally stunning,” she said. She soon discovered that it did glow on its own, courtesy of an LED battery Zacharias had cleverly concealed between the beetle and stone, complete with a tiny on-off switch.
Zacharias’ journey to become an old-fashioned jeweler, who designs and makes much of what he sells in his Lawrence store, began when he immigrated with his family from the old world, Germany, to Kansas at the age of three. That journey included a plan to attend medical school and become a doctor like his father, which ended when he discovered his aversion to blood. Plan B was a major in jewelry at the University of Kansas, where he was swept up in the anti-war movement and, in his own words, became a hippie, traveling to San Francisco, where he opened a jewelry business.
When an oil embargo and high gas prices hit the tourist industry and his jewelry business in California, he headed back to Kansas where he operated his successful business and became a political activist and outspoken supporter of a clean and lively downtown Lawrence, a devoted father and a regular traveler to Germany where, perhaps in a bow to his hippie days, he once urinated on the Berlin Wall and later brought a souvenir hunk of it home to his adopted country.
The Old and New Worlds
Art has been in his family since his great-grandfather, Karl Wilhelm DeBryker, who was the “stadtmahler,” German for city painter, in Hamburg. For 20 years, he did all the official portraits for the city.
Zacharias said his great-grandfather “did what we called gothic-romantic art and that was extremely out of favor for the Nazis. He couldn’t sell his paintings anymore because heroic art was in.”
The artistic tradition was carried down to Zacharias’ father. Although his father loved the arts, he attended and made his living as a doctor during World War II.
After the war, his father learned that doctors were needed in western Kansas, which had a population that was about 60 percent ethnic German. It seemed like a good place to live, so the family came to Kansas.
They came in 1953 when Zacharias was three, so he doesn’t remember much of Germany, but recalled the families’ living conditions.
“We grew up in the remnants of a burned-out building,” he said. “We had the living room. There were six families living in a six-room house. Each family had a different room.
“I was born on the living room couch, which was sad because they had to throw away the couch after that,” he said, laughing. “So when we had the chance to come to America and not live in the ruins anymore, it was a good idea. Plus we had a lot of kindred feelings toward the Americans.”
His father did his internship at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, where Zacharias attended elementary school. In 1958, the family moved to Dodge City, where Zacharias completed junior high and high school. He graduated in 1968 and came to the University.
He spent summers going back and forth between Dodge City and Germany. At the University, Zacharias was supposed to become a doctor, but he had one slight problem: blood. “I’m too squeamish for it,” he said.
Becoming a Jeweler
Zacharias also learned he had a nervous disorder that made him black out. His advisor recommended that he take a jewelry class as relaxation therapy, although he didn’t yet see it as a career. He said, “We were always taught in Dodge that there was no way you could make a living at art.”
Zacharias began selling crafts he created, including leather candles, jewelry and big furry purses he refers to as “Sonny and Cher purses.” Although the plan was for him to go to medical school he said it just didn’t fit with the counterculture attitude of the times or his aversion to blood.
“I decided to go into the crafts,” he said. “I always liked making stuff with my hands and designing stuff and solving problems.”
Just as he began down that career path, the “days of rage” exploded at the University, and his career was put on hold. Students took over buildings, the Kansas Union was burned down and he joined anti-Vietnam War protests, once getting clubbed by a policeman, he recalled.
When the jewelry professor who served as his mentor left, he decided to leave too, finishing the six hours he needed at the University of Utah. Since the University gave him credit for those hours, he earned his KU degree in jewelry. In Utah, he met his former wife and worked for a jewelry company.
“I was their ‘Pearl Guy.’ I bought pearls, stringed pearls, graded pearls, found guys to do diamonds with pearls. Working with pearls was always considered a little feminine, but I like pearls,” he said, smiling.
His wife, also an artist, helped her husband open a business called Easy Street Gallery in Salt Lake City.
They moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s and got into the wholesale business. Zacharias created hand-made jewelry in his shop, Stars is Nar. “Nar” is the German word for sausages his family used to crave when he was younger. He also made jewelry for galleries in Sausalito and Stetson Beach.
Peter did fine until the oil embargo hit, “Gas prices skyrocketed and the rationing just killed tourism,” he said. “Sales within 90 days dropped by 80 percent. It’s like cutting the junkies off from heroine, cutting off California from its gasoline. It was an incredible drop in business.”
Back to Kansas
The couple moved to Kansas and opened a downtown shop in Topeka. When a suburban mall opened and put many of the shops out of business, Zacharias opened his first Lawrence shop on Eighth Street. He called it Stars is Nar and later Stars and Our Jewels.
He moved to his current location at 723 Massachusetts St. in 1982. Zacharias said it was a “dump” when he bought it and later renovated it with a 1880s style.
The new store was called Goldmakers after one of the galleries he once supplied in Salt Lake City, where he began designing unique pieces like the amber necklace made for Amber.
He takes pride in the fact that it is not just an amber gem on a silver chain. He called the stone “museum quality” rather than one mass-produced by a manufacturer. Amber said that it is a true fossil because ancient insects can still be seen trapped in translucent gold resin, including a tiny spider.
Pleasing customers like the Williams isn’t always easy, Zacharias said, recalling when he was in California and making Indian jewelry for Native Americans based on their designs.
“My first shipment of Indian jewelry I delivered to the Indian guy in Sausalito and he said, ‘Oh, these won’t do at all.’ And I said, ‘What’s wrong? I did a wonderful job.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s the problem.’ He went out into the parking lot and dumped my whole tray of jewelry into the parking lot and walked on them. Then he took the turquoise rings back up and said, ‘Okay, now they look like Indian jewelry.’ They were just too well executed. The guy was great though, and I liked him.”
Through all of his locations and shop names, Zacharias remains the finicky jeweler.
“I’m a designer and craftsmen and I carve wax models,” he said. “Originally I did everything, stone cutting, wax modeling, siding, but now I have 10 people working for me.”
Ardys Ramberg, wax carver and salesperson, first worked for him from 1976 to 1991, and returned in 1998.
“It’s really nice when you run into someone on the street or at a party and the person flashes a ring at you, and says, ‘Oh, you did my ring.’ Or one time I was sitting by this woman at a wedding and I recognized her ring and I said, ‘I know who made your ring.’ And she said, ‘I got it at Goldmakers.’ I quickly answered, ‘I know,’” Ramberg said.
Zacharias said custom tastes had turned more conservative and in the past five years, he had done mostly traditional diamond work. He has always been interested in art history and enjoys making art nouveau, art deco, Italian Renaissance, Hellenistic Greek and Imperial Roman pieces. He has a knack for finding the particular style customers want, he said.
Even though he gets fewer requests these days for custom pieces, Lawrence is where he wants to be.
“Lawrence is definitely the hippest place in the Midwest,” he said. “In California, people are more liberal this is true, but they are not any more sophisticated. I just could never get ahead there. I would make money, but to own my own building, own my own business, it’s impossible. Here, at least it’s still doable.”
Zacharias has also enjoyed getting involved in Lawrence politics. He campaigned for union rights for trash haulers, argued for preservation of historical downtown buildings and fought for more landscaping and trees downtown.
“I’m at City Hall a lot,” he said. He has complained about the homeless being downtown, urinating on his store front and hanging out on the roof. He wants a shelter away from downtown where people have to sign in so that their progress can be monitored. He said that with anonymous shelters where any homeless person could walk in unregistered, their life slipped through the cracks because no one was monitoring their problems.
Life Outside Jewelery
Zacharias and his wife were divorced 10 years ago, but share joint custody of their three children. Jake, 18, is a senior at Lawrence Free State High School. The two older children followed in their father’s footsteps and currently attend the University. Nicholas, 21, is a junior and Bernadette, 24, and will graduate in the spring. Although Peter is close to all three, he said he has a special relationship with his daughter.
When she was in elementary school, Zacharias would take her out of school each year for a day to go to art shows or a museum.
“He was so cute about it,” she said, thinking back to how excited she used to get. “We would go to the Nelson Museum in Kansas City and look at their various collections.”
Bernadette also has worked at Goldmakers for eight years, helping with small repairs, designing and helping the customers. She had the opportunity to travel once a year with her father to buy jewelry in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Like her father, she loves jewelry.
“We’re really close and get along really well,” she said. “These days we work together more as friends rather than a father daughter relationship. We have a strong professional relationship.”
Zacharias now lives with his girlfriend, an architect who was introduced to him by his gem-carving assistant, who is also her niece.
“We hit it off pretty quick,” Zacharias said. “I’m not getting married again. First time I barely made it through with my business. Number one small business failure is divorce. She’s a wonderful lady, but I don’t know if I want to be exposed to that with America’s current laws.”
Zacharias and his girlfriend live in a Victorian house on Louisiana Street, only two blocks from his shop downtown. He bought it from his one-time English professor in 1976, and attended his first house party there in college in 1968. The home is filled with various paintings and artwork from his father and great-grandfather as well as other art collected over the years.
An old-fashioned jewelry shop like Goldmakers is unusual today. Customers who wander through the store find Peter busily working or assisting people at his small desk towards the back of the shop. He is usually dressed in corduroy pants (never jeans), patterned shirts, a navy blue apron, leather shoes and juggling three different pairs of glasses with various focal points. Depending on what he’s working on, a magnifying glass is used to ensure details are done correctly.
He is still able to do all the things he loves, including visiting Germany every few years. One visit was to the Berlin Wall shortly after it came down.
“I have my own chunk of the wall at home and of course whizzed on it at the time, and it felt great,” he said.
He never forgets where he came from and continues to focus on creating precious art objects for the public eye, just as his father and great-grandfather did in Germany. It is what makes long time customers like the Williams keep coming back. Although they now live in Los Angeles, they return to Lawrence and Goldmakers to find specific jewelry.
“I’ll see some earrings that I like, but then I think, ‘No, I’ll wait to go to Peter’s shop,’” Amber said. “He is a rare breed now.”
Discussion
The Kansan.com staff reviews comments regularly. Please be respectful of your peers. For our full user policy, click here.
Share your 2¢
Requires free registration.