People entrust Wayne Webster to handle and restore their priceless family heirlooms, a responsibility he takes great pride in.
The 33-year-old Webster is a goldsmith, a skilled artisan who creates, repairs and modifies jewelry, watches and other precious items. He is the proprietor of Wayne & Co. Goldsmiths, his namesake shop, which operates out of a storefront at 635 Monmouth St. in Newport.
In a conversation with LINK nky, Webster said that he works on irreplaceable pieces–often one-of-a-kind heirlooms that are no longer in circulation and hold tremendous sentimental value and historic reverence for the people who own them.
“A lot of my business is these family pieces that are irreplaceable,” he said. “Even if I could make them, you know, 100% the exact way, it’s the history behind those pieces that can’t be replaced.”
After a stint repairing jewelry at a store in Hebron, Webster took up goldsmithing in 2014. What drew him was the opportunity to work with his hands, solving complex problems in real-time. Webster opened his store in February after going independent in 2022.
“I really liked working on small things, but I like fixing things,” he said. “I like the problem-solving aspect of it, so I got hooked.”
He chose Newport because of its reputation as a tight-knit community, feeling that his shop would fit in well among the eclectic mix of artisans, fitness studios, restaurants and offices on Monmouth Street.
“I just thought maybe there was something I could bring to the community, especially something down this way, where I can do everything by hand,” he said. “As old as Newport is, there’s a lot of pieces sitting around that they don’t really have somewhere they can take it to.”
Jerry Peluso, former mayor of Newport and co-owner of Peluso’s Market, believes Webster offers a unique service to the community by revitalizing a craft that had been dormant locally.
“As a business owner, it’s been on the street for many years, not only is it a cool business, but it’s a very unique business that the city should be very happy to have because, you know, that’s a craft, that you very seldom see,” he said.
Goldsmithing is a trade that has faded from prominence over the past few decades, explained Webster. Locally, from the early to mid-20th century, there were a number of goldsmiths working on-site at independent, family-owned jewelry stores in cities across the region.
As time went on, independent goldsmiths faced increasing competition from jewelry store chains like Jared’s and Zales, in addition to the outsourcing of jewelry design and production to foreign countries. This resulted in a decline in the number of goldsmiths as many professionals aged out of the field. However, for Webster, this vacuum presented an opportunity.
Sitting in his shop surrounded by ring-sizers, hypersonic cleaning machines, handcrafted workbenches and a large laser welder, Webster is in his element.
“It’s a unique trade in that it’s part artisan, part trade and part engineer, because you have to have a little bit of knowledge on everything, especially on the material side,” he said.
