Bishop’s Jewelry Gallery

May 21

In their own words

“If you have an idea in your head, it’s like mining for us. We love to mine your imagination to try to get the details out so we can create whatever will make you happy and be an heirloom for the rest of your life. We cherish that process and have customers that have experienced that with us, who have realized that there is no limit to what we can do for them.”

-Rita Bishop

Jason’s Interview with Rita

Jason

Today we get to talk to a staple in Alaska: Rita Bishop from Bishop's Jewelry Gallery from Fairbanks, Alaska.

How did you end up joining Bishop's Jewelry Gallery?

Rita

My husband and I met at a local art show. He was showing his mother's jewelry because his family was a family of gold miners in Alaska. His stepfather had come up here to mine gold in the 70s and do the pipeline.

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I was cutting silhouettes at this show at the University of Alaska. He watched me cutting all these portraits and his mother had known who I was. I had done a beautiful portrait of the stepfather at his mine at a huge boutique and she paid me in gold nuggets. She told me I need to meet these two boys in New York City.

The next year, I'm at this show and I see her. She said, “Wait one moment.” I knew she was going to bring her son to me. And that's what she did. She brought me my husband. We never left each other's side from that day on.

I was working at the time for a jeweler in town, making a lot of gold jewelry and working on my silhouettes and fabric. I didn't know where I was going with my business as an artist, but I liked everything I was doing. His mother was across the street and I would walk across the street to see my boyfriend. She convinced me to quit working for the other jeweler and come work for her.

Six months later, she informed both of us that she was not going to keep us employed and we had to go off and make our own business. She was setting us up with all the accounts that my husband had acquired for her. We got encouraged to go down to the lower part of the state. We were able to sell to all the stores down there because we were wholesalers at the time. We came up with a new kind of jewelry, combining sterling silver highlighted with natural gold nuggets. In the early 1980s, the cruise lines started coming here and that's how we started making jewelry for the cruise and tourist industry. It just boomed.

Jason
Tell me how you got the courage to actually open up your own physical store.

Rita
In 2008, when gold went really high, we had already started doing CAD work for our own product for wholesale. We thought, “Why don't we open a retail store and offer it to locals, and not worry about the tourists as much?” We happened to know a jeweler that had retired and she had a building that we could go right into. We opened a store within three days—she had the cases and everything there.

We had enough product of our own to fill the cases and we started learning right away. We started having people come in because we were already kind of famous—our kids played hockey in town. Our name was Bishop's Jewelry, so we used our name. We put “Gallery” at the end because I'm an artist and I wanted to have other products that were more artistic. I tried to bring products up here that they weren't going to find anywhere else. We started doing custom and offering CAD work.

Jason
If there was a celebrity that you could style down the runway or at the Oscars, who would it be?

Rita
I love JLo. I love the way she handles herself and the way she presents herself. She's like a beautiful sculpture. It would be fun to decorate anyone as beautiful as her.

Jason
What are some key causes you want our audience to know about?

Rita
We support the hockey community. In the past, we've done a hockey week, helping the community, and we design the prize. I believe that sports are very important to the community, especially for the kids. We also support Montessori schools. We try to give a little to everyone.

Jason
Here is your chance, Rita, you can say whatever you like to Meet the Jewelers.

Rita
We love doing custom work. We love challenges. We love to create whatever is going to make you happy and be an heirloom for the rest of your life. We cherish that process. We take pride in making something that has longevity, wearability, and cost-effectiveness.