By applying computer-aided design technology to family heirlooms, The Gem Lab on West Henrietta Road can extend the reach of customers’ most treasured family jewelry for family members across generations.
Two daughters and their mother can design matching chevron rings inlaid with a combination of family birthstones they make a memory out of choosing together. To hold a loved one close, siblings or cousins can co-design matching pendants with their grandmothers' diamonds and by doing so, carry a connection to her–and each other–on them.
In this way, family members can create a uniform design together and wear it. The experience and the jewelry unites them, infusing their jewelry with layers of meaning using the stones and settings their loved ones wore. The Gem Lab’s family owners say it’s a fulfilling creative process that is a little like collaging moments, eras, personalities and styles.
Customers can spend anywhere from one hour to three or four, one-hour appointments with Amy DeLooze, the founder's granddaughter, who specializes in designing jewelry in CAD (Computer-Aided Design), using modern technology on pieces dating back a century or more. She’s been at the Gem Lab for 15 years and this summer expects to welcome her 13-year-old son to start learning the family business–just like his Uncle Paul did when he was 13.
“It’s a creative outlet to be able to make people’s visions a reality,” Amy says. "It’s exciting to work with customers every day. You get to be in these experiences with people, but being able to grow with the times. When (Paul) started, everything was waxes and handmade, and it’s completely changed now.”
Amy’s mother Lori became vice president of The Gem Lab in 2018. She joined the company in 2000, running payroll, customer communications and buying. She and her brother were two of four siblings to enter the family business, which started in 1958 in the Sibley Tower downtown. Their mom Shirley handled the bookkeeping for the first 40 years of the business
“When I was 13, I wasn’t too excited about (work) because I wanted to be playing with my friends, but when I was 14 and 15 and working at the bench, learning how to make and repair jewelry, doing something with my hands was very gratifying,” Paul remembers. “Taking a raw piece of metal and turning it into a piece of jewelry was very appealing to me. One of the first things my father had me do was take a piece of silver and hammer it and make a pendant for my mother to wear. We still have it.”
Paul and Lori have fond memories. Paul remembers his grandmother softly putting her hands on his shoulders while he worked at the bench. When she returned later that week, the professional seamstress made him a jeweler’s smock that fit him to a T. She was measuring him when she put her hands on his shoulders (without a measuring tape), and he didn't realize it until he put the jacket on. He gets choked up telling the story. Lori reassures him as he does.
“I wouldn’t think of doing this without her,” Paul says of his sister Lori. “We couldn’t do it without her,” Lori says of her daughter Amy.
The Cassarino family and the families they serve express their creativity and preserve the stones their loved ones held dear, Amy says. In multiple ways, The Gem Lab makes dearer what customers already hold dearest.
Joseph Cassarino’s story
The Cassarino family has been restoring, repairing and designing jewelry to one degree or another since Paul and Lori’s father, Joseph, was a teenager at Benjamin Franklin High School in the 1940s.
“Dad had his own business. He would go around to the local jewelry stores and get their repairs,” Gem Lab President Paul Cassarino says. “He would have these little coin envelopes with jewelry and instructions, and he carried a leather briefcase with him that was by his side 24/7. He never let go of that briefcase. He had one trusted friend in high school. During gym class, he would hold the bag. Other than that my dad always had it.”
After school, Joseph would take his briefcase to nearby jewelry stores, dropping off the repairs he did the night before and collecting new repairs to be done.
“My father couldn’t believe when he was young in this business and putting a shingle on the wall (his gemology degree from Great Britain) that someone would walk up and hand him their most precious and many times the most valuable thing they own,” Paul says. “In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, people didn’t have cars worth tens of thousands of dollars. Only their home was worth more than the family jewels.”
In the 1960s, other jewelry stores had only finished jewelry. Because Joseph refused to borrow money to run his new business, he could only afford unfinished jewelry. When customers went with stones looking for a jeweler to create a piece for them, they often only found finished products in jewelers' cases. “Because he refused to go into debt to buy gemstones, he bought just blank rings. He brought in the customers who wanted to fill those rings with Grandma’s diamonds,” Paul says. Joseph's financial limitation became a niche he filled in the community. The majority of Gem Lab's work is customization and restoration.