Behind the Bench

Cheryl Burchell takes a seat at her workbench. She places a magnifying visor on her head and picks up a century-old ring. She turns it, studies it.

“People always inherit interesting things,” she says, grabbing a tool she’ll use to rebuild the ring’s bezel.

She’s in her element behind that old bench, one that bears the marks of 38 years of goldsmithing. It’s here where Cheryl became an artist. Here, where she created her signature Heart Like an Awl charm that put her on the map 18 years ago. Here, where she sits today, a successful businesswoman and master of her craft.

“I’ve grown up at this bench,” she says, seated in the middle of the workroom in her Coeur d’Alene jewelry store. “Everything I have learned has been applied here.”

As I watch Cheryl work, I’m distracted and fascinated by the organized chaos that is her bench. There are burrs and bits, sanders and saws, metal scraps and dozens of colorful needle nose pliers. The bench is worn and burned from decades of hammering, sawing and torching. I can’t help but wonder if that old bench could talk what stories it would tell of Cheryl’s life and career.

She laughs at the thought.

“It would probably say keep going. Keep learning,” she says.

“In this trade you learn something new every day.

“Or it might say, quit beating on me,” she says, running her hand over its rough, eroded edge. She looks at the bench as you might an old friend who has been at your side most of your life.

“We have been through a lot together,” she says.

Behind Cheryl’s bench are stacks of envelopes containing orders for jewelry that need to be repaired, resized or reimagined. At the moment, she is carving red wax into what will become an engagement ring for one of her customers.

Upbeat music plays in the workroom, which is busy with activity from Cheryl’s three other goldsmiths and sales staff, a loyal team that’s been with her many years. From here, you can see the entire store through a large glass window that separates the workroom from the retail space.

In fact, all of the workrooms — casting and plating, polishing, rock cutting — are separated by glass. Cheryl wanted transparency and openness. She wanted her staff to be able to communicate easily with each other and she wanted customers to be able to see how jewelry is made, a process worth observing.

Once Cheryl is finished carving the wax, it will be taken to the casting and plating room where a plaster impression will be made. The impression will sit for 24 hours in a kiln set at 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The wax will melt away, leaving a hollow cast. The cast will be transferred to a spring-loaded centrifuge, where it will be fi lled with hot metal and spun until the metal is evenly distributed and bubble free. Once the metal sets, Cheryl will then spend hours cutting and polishing the ring. Finally, she’ll set the stone.

“You can blow it. That’s why it’s called lost wax,” she says. “If you only carve one and somehow don’t get a complete casting, you have to redo the whole piece.”

Cheryl is an artist, though she doesn’t think of herself as one.

She pauses to consider the label. “Well, I guess I am. But I’m more of a technician, a master craftsman. I’m really a goldsmith.”

In fact, she’s all of those things and modest, too.

Cheryl did, after all, design the well-known Heart Like an Awl, which she created with her then husband in 1999 and which has since gone all over the world, she says. Copyrighted and trademarked, the charm is as much a recognized symbol of Coeur d’Alene as it is of Cheryl’s success.

“New York has the Apple, Seattle has the Space Needle, Coeur d’Alene has the Heart Like an Awl,” she says. “We just got lucky.”

Still, she’s much more comfortable with the mechanics of her trade. It’s what drew her to jewelry making in the first place.

Cheryl developed an interest in jewelry as a high school student in California, where she grew up. Initially, she thought she might like pottery but quickly decided it wasn’t her thing.

“I got mad at the pottery teacher and stomped over to the jewelry class,” she recalls. “We did enameling and copper wiring. I liked the enameling.”

What she enjoyed about making jewelry she discovered in her pottery class.

“I couldn’t throw a pot,” she says. “But I was good at slab construction. The building. That’s what jewelry is. You build stuff.”

She also liked that it made her focus. The work is tedious and time-consuming and allowed the self-described “hyper” teenager to channel her energy.

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“I loved it. It was hard work, really attention-type work, which was perfect for me. I’m sure I would have been diagnosed with ADD in today’s world,” she laughs. “With jewelry, you could really hammer the hell out of stuff.”

five years downtown before moving to Northwest Boulevard. She remembers what a risky move it was. At the time, the thoroughfare wasn’t a desirable location, but Cheryl needed the space to combine her work studio and her store.

“Most people laughed at me, saying I wasn’t going to make it down here,” she says.

They were wrong.

Cheryl has been at the location for 12 years and just recently expanded the store, doubling its size and increasing its inventory. She added a rock-cutting room, where she’ll offer classes to the public, and she started a new jewelry line called Cheri B, a collection of fun, artsy one-of-a-kind pieces.

“We’re producing more at a faster rate than we ever have to accommodate all the new customers,” she says. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s very exciting.”

Cheryl spends most of her day running her business. She gets back to her workbench as often as she can to work alongside her other goldsmiths. But she often waits until the end of the day when she can slip back to her bench and spend uninterrupted hours designing and creating original pieces.

Close friend Katie often keeps her company.

“If we want to see her, we have to come here,” she says, stopping into the workroom to say hello to Cheryl. “There are many times I come and have a glass of wine and keep her company. We’ll sometimes sit here till 10 or 11 at night.”

“Not as much anymore,” Cheryl chimes in. “It’s lonely.”

She hopes the rock-cutting room will help.

“Part of the remodel is to create more of a reason to hang out here at night. If I have rock cutting, it creates an evening art space where people have somewhere to go. Friends can come by. I can work and we can crank the stereo.”

Cheryl sets downs the wax ring she’s been working on and gets up to look for a tool. She reaches into a small cabinet and grabs a graver. A downside to her old bench is it has only one drawer.

She points across the room to a sleek new workbench a friend built for her. It’s made of walnut, oak and ash and has nine drawers.

It’s like a new car waiting to be driven. Except, Cheryl can’t bring herself to get behind the wheel.

“I’m scared to use a new bench,” she says, knowing at some point she’ll ease into it. “I’m going to use them side by side for a while.”

For now, she remains at her old faithful. It’s home. N

By Kristina Lyman
Photography By Joel Riner

As Featured In: Summer/Fall 2017

“Once you get behind it, you just know how everything is going to operate,” she says. “You’re secure. Like, I’m here, let’s rock it.”