Jeweller's shop to lose its finest gem

In his 63 years' work, Noel Gerety (77) has missed just two weeks because of sickness, to have his appendix out in 1944.

"Well, I had to," he says. "In those days a burst appendix was a burst appendix. I wouldn't have been much use if I didn't get it out."

Apart from his two weeks' annual leave and the odd day off for a wedding or funeral, the Glasnevin man has sat at his workbench at McDowell's jewellers on O'Connell Street, Dublin, 51/2 days a week, every week, since 1938.

He's retiring this week, ending an 83-year family tradition of devotion to the jewelling trade. When he was 14, he joined his father, Thomas, as an apprentice.

Thomas, who had been with the family firm since 1918, told his eldest son upon reaching his 14th birthday: "Come on now, you're coming with me, time to serve your time." In those days, says Noel, "most lads left school at 14".

For his first couple of days he "just sat and watched, until finally he gave me something small to work on. 'You should be well able for that,' he told me."

It was a bronze medal someone wanted made into a brooch. It needed a pin and clasp on the back, a job that would have taken his dad 20 minutes, he smiles.

"But I overheated the metal at the end. The new clasp came off, and I had to do it all a second time. It took me about two days. He was trying to push me a bit far. It didn't put me off. It couldn't put me off. He'd just put me to do it again, so I was all the time improving."

The two worked together, three storeys up, in the tiny, musty workroom overlooking the capital's main thoroughfare until 1970, when Thomas died, aged 84. He was on his way to work when he collapsed with a heart-attack.

Noel's work as a "jobbing jeweller" has included, for example, repairing bracelets and changing ring sizes. His has always been work of "amazing quality", says the managing director of McDowells, Mr Peter McDowell. "We'll miss him."

Showing some of his current work, he lifts an intricate chain bracelet which needs a new clasp. The job entails removing the pin from two of the links, making a new tube for the clasp and soldering it to the bracelet.

Asked if anyone is being trained to do such work these days, Mr McDowell says, "No, none of the young people are going into it any more. It's a dying skill."

The dark-green paint is now peeling from the walls of the workroom, and the ceiling is discoloured after decades of the gas flame used to melt gold, silver and other precious metals. Noel sits on the same stool as in 1938, works at the same bench and uses tools dating back to Edwardian times which many a modern jeweller would eschew.

He recalls the war years, when McDowell's was one of the few jewellers in Dublin able to continue making jewellery. Precious metal could not be imported from either Britain or the Continent, but the McDowells had a store of scrap gold and silver which Noel and Thomas used to melt and roll.

"Oh, it was full go here during the war," he says. He remembers coming in to work the morning after the IRA partially blew up Nelson's Pillar and watching from his bench as the Army finished the job. "They broke a few windows, did more damage than the IRA did."

Asked about plans for his retirement, he says he doesn't "want to see too much more jewellery for a while".

"I'll take the easy life, do a bit of gardening, spend more time with (wife) Josephine. And you'll see me a bit more time down my local, the Addison Lodge."