A longtime downtown jewel(er) prepares to close its doors

LACONIA — Life's major milestones are often honored with jewelry, from marriages and anniversaries to births and graduations. By creating the pieces that adorn these cherished moments, local jewelers form close bonds with their customers.

As one half of the duo behind Kramer & Hall Goldsmiths, which will be closing its doors this summer after 35 years downtown, Keith Hall knows this role well.

“The small, local jewelry store, they’re your neighbor, they know everybody,” he said. “A customer comes in, you know whether their son or daughter just got married and if there was a birth in the family. The jeweler becomes friends with the customer and the customer becomes friends with the jeweler.”

Keith and his wife Lilo, whose maiden name is Kramer, opened their store in the old train station in 1988. When the pair retire around the end of the month, they will have been there for 35 years, remaining a jewel of the downtown business community as it has ebbed, flowed and evolved through the decades.

After growing up in New Hampshire, Keith attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with an initial intention to pursue sculpture. One silversmithing and jewelry-making class, however, set him on a new path. He began his career in Boston, then in 1974 accepted a position with Sawyer’s Jewelry in Laconia.

Lilo, who grew up and began her career in Switzerland, studied jewelry and became a Swiss-certified goldsmith. She took a liking to the states while joining her parents on vacation here, and relocated officially in 1980, also taking a position at Sawyer’s.

When Keith moved to start his own jewelry business, Lilo joined. The pair married about six years after Kramer & Hall opened. 

All their work is one-of-a-kind, as the store only sells what the pair has made, and most of their pieces are custom.

“We made everything we've sold, ever, since we opened,” Keith said. “And most of them never went in the case because they were custom-made for somebody.”

In addition to the pieces they made for local customers, Keith said they were proud to make pieces for buyers from across the world: from a large gold crown made for a Wisconsin priest, to jewelry made for a tugboat captain in the North Pacific, who consulted with Lilo over calls and texts.

Through the years, Keith and Lilo updated their tools and skill set to meet the times, transitioning from hand-drawn to computer design and purchasing a machine for repairs that uses a laser.

“We kept trying to update as we went along,” Keith said.

The downtown area and business community has morphed multiple times since they moved into their space at the train station — which at the time had been used as storage for a nearby doughnut shop and was full of flour, Keith said.

“When I came here it was a vibrant commercial area with clothing stores and drugstores ... you could come downtown on a Friday night and get all of your shopping done,” Keith recalled. In the waning years of the century and into the 2000s, he continued, “we watched them, one by one, go out of business.” 

It was a trend mirrored in the jewelry industry, with local, “mom and pop” jewelry stores closing at rates exponentially higher than they were opening, and with customers increasingly turning to box stores.

As he enters retirement, Keith advocates for the unmatched service and personal touch of a local jeweler. 

When people come into a local shop, Keith said, “many times when the customer walks in the door, if they have a problem, you can solve it and get it fixed right there. With the larger chains, it’s two weeks no matter what. They send it out to a big shop,” such as one where he started his career in Boston.

While the store will close, Keith said, he’s confident its legacy in the city will live on in the custom pieces Laconians and other customers carry through life. He and Lilo are looking forward to a restful retirement.

Kramer & Hall is offering 30% off its stock until its doors close around the end of the month.