Hur Jewelers

Mar 8

OREM, UT

In their own words

“I consider myself an artist. I think jewelers kind of demean themselves, especially goldsmiths, undefined jewelers who do the work and consider themselves just mechanics of getting things done. You’re an artist, and it’s that simple. Having the right people at the right time pushed me to believe what was a hidden talent. I love what I do, and I love creating.”

-Dave Hur

Jason’s Interview with Dave

Jason

We're back on Meet the Jewelers and today we're talking to Dave Hur from Hur Jewelers out in Orem, Utah. How did you get into the industry?

Dave

I started extremely young. I was roughly 15 years old and I grew up in Boulder, Colorado. I had a high school jewelry arts teacher. His name was Bill Reader and he noticed that I was kind of an arts rat. I would be always in the arts departments and I spent tons of time doing everything from ceramics to jewelry. I consider myself an artist. I was not the best student, but he would push me to be creative into getting these competitions. I won some of them because he forced me to enter, quite frankly. He saw some talent and pushed me into exposing a talent that I didn't really even know I had. From there, I got to gallery showings and all sorts of things as a teenager. By the time I was 19, the same thing was going on at Colorado University. I only went to a semester there, but I ended up teaching the graduate studio at 18 years old. And by the time I was 19, I had my own standalone store. I opened my store 39 years ago, three days ago on January 30. It's been a long time.

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Jason
Did you have the support of your parents on this?

Dave
My dad is a multiple-nominated Nobel scientist. He's a genius. He's on the Hall of Science in D.C. for pictures drawn from Einstein. All of us, all of his seven children do something with their hands, which is astounding. We have surgeons and artists and custom woodworkers.

Jason
What's the feeling like when customers enter Hur Jewelers?

Dave
You know that old line where if you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life. That is the absolute epitome of how I feel when I come to work in my store. I love what I do. I love creating. I love just listening to that customer. I think the biggest thing that we can do now is just truly listen. There’s nothing better than seeing the joy in somebody's face when you did it right. That's what keeps me here—I get to make people happy.

Jason
Do you have a fun experience of how you made somebody's day?

Dave
I was working with a young couple. He came in initially by himself and he was trying to figure out what on earth can I build for her. And so, he did. He started trying to find out things that she had told girlfriends. She had no idea apparently, which was strange because these days most proposals are not out of the blue. It was so behind the scenes. He sent me a neat little video of when he gave it to her, and she just broke down and bawled. He's a professional greenskeeper. He went up at night. He said, “Oh, we've got a broken sprinkler and you're going to have to come with me.” He drags her clear out there on this upper hole and as they come over the rise in the lights on the back of one of the ferns says, “Will you marry me?” And there's the friends and family up there. And she pulls out a sketch that she had made in high school—I saw this on the video reel—and the ring style was nearly a clone of what she had drawn nearly ten years previous of this-is-going-to-be-my-wedding-ring type of thing. I couldn't believe it.

And then I had a lady just weeks ago here. Her husband passed away a year ago. She was trying to come up with something to pass down - a memory to her children. She had five children. She came up with very personalized pieces of jewelry that would go with the memory for each of these kids. She transferred a fingerprint that they got from the mortuary, his fingerprint, and we had them do a deep laser etching on these different pieces. Each of them had this fingerprint on it. They had a birthday party for him and each of the kids received these gifts from mom.

Jason
You also give back so much to the community. We're not gonna name all the names. What are some top ones that you want Meet the Jewelers to know?

Dave
My employees and myself are very active in various social causes and efforts. We always contribute at the food bank every quarter. The Women's Shelter. We help with donations of food supplies.

Jason
You're one of the top jewelers in the area. Why do you think that is?

Dave
I am a master goldsmith, and I am one of six graduate gemologists of GIA in the entire state of Utah. I have the technical type of background. We're in our 39th year. We have clientele all over, primarily the West. We've developed a sense of trust. We are a part of this community and we feel like we owe a debt to society to make it a better place. It's a happy experience. It should be a joyous occasion anytime somebody receives a piece of jewelry.

Jason
This is your chance to tell us one thing.

Dave
The biggest thing is that you really can have a dream. You really can make it come true. I have been able to live my dream of being creative, being an artist, making a difference, and at the same time being able to raise a family of five. There's no reason why you can't dream big and have your dreams turned into reality. It's been so fun with the help of computer-aided design to come up with styles that truly would have been almost impossible to facilitate only about 10 years ago. I think it's really fun. I love being part of that memory, part of that creation, part of that difference in our community and in their lives. I love going to work. I still love creating. I still love feeling like every day I get to be an artist.