Goldsmith retires as world-class jeweler

His canvas is tiny and his craft tedious, but this artist craves perfection in detail.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Michelangelo had a ceiling. Jim Mazurkewicz has 4 square inches.

In his Beachwood studio, Mazurkewicz taps a tiny dot into a piece of silver no bigger than an ophthalmologist’s business card. He taps another. Then another. For a day and a half — 12 hours — he taps, until the dots form a mistlike texture that serves as the background for a commissioned pin of a crow, diamond in mouth, perched in front of Mount Fuji.

It will be one of his final pieces.

Mazurkewicz, 65, retired Dec. 24 from Potter and Mellen, Cleveland’s renowned jewelry studio.

His legacy stretches far and wide, in the hundreds of rings, brooches, necklaces and other works he’s crafted, from a $10,000 gold and diamond sunburst pendant purchased by Abu Dhabi royalty to an $80,000 piece featuring a 167-carat aquamarine gemstone.

Mazurkewicz might be the last of Cleveland’s hand-crafting master goldsmiths. These are the days of diamond-focused jewelry and young artists who’d rather jump into the foundry fire than spend 60 hours painstakingly transforming a piece of precious metal.

Which is something Mazurkewicz has been doing for decades.

“You put everything in a piece that you can,” he says. “It was what Mr. Potter wanted. I just felt that I had to do it. ... Every piece you did was its own little work of art. It wasn’t something that was tossed off quickly just to get money. Sometimes you didn’t make money on a piece.”

Horace Potter opened the Potter Shop in 1899. There, he showcased his elegant jewelry and silver and brass work, created with detailed design and world-class craftsmanship. Today, his pieces are handled with white gloves by museum curators across the country.

Along with the likes of Louis Tiffany, Potter and his crew of artists helped spark the Arts and Crafts Movement in America, a push-back against the factory-produced products of the day.

Like Cleveland itself, Potter and Mellen expanded throughout the early 20th century, adding fine china, silverware and even garden accessories to its store near East 105th Street and Carnegie.

In 1989, Potter and Mellen was purchased by Ellen Stirn Mavec. Soon after, she met Mazurkewicz, who was ready to make a change after 20 years of teaching metalsmithing at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Not only did Mazurkewicz offer Stirn Mavec — and her customers — a link back to the old-world craftsmanship of Horace Potter, his artwork was “spectacular,” she says.

“He was, quite frankly, a gift from heaven,” says Stirn Mavec.

His sister, Karen Fisher, knew there was something unique about him back when they were kids and it was her turn to clear the kitchen table in their Seven Hills home.

Their mother used to make pig’s tail soup, using the actual portion of the animal’s anatomy. After the meal, under Jim’s bowl, she’d find the tiny bones from the tail. All of them. Arranged in order. Largest to smallest. In a perfect semicircle.

“His attention to detail was just phenomenal.”

A master goldsmith needs the magical hands of an artist and the unique mind of a designer, one that knows how to make an inspiration a reality (do-overs are tough when you’re working with 18-karat gold). He needs an uncanny ability to sit for hours and focus. Perhaps most of all, he needs to have almost an obsession with perfection.

Mazurkewicz had them all.

Before joining Potter and Mellen, Mazurkewicz visited some monasteries and came close to becoming a monk. The idea of meditating the mysteries of life appeals to him.

“If I were to come around again,” he says, “that’s what I would do.”

He’s been listening to a CD of chanting monks, cranked up, as he drives from his apartment in Parma to Potter and Mellen in Beachwood (the store moved in 2005). The ride is often different every day.

“I don’t like to take the freeway in, because it’s so boring. I have several long ways,” he says. “I love looking at what’s being built and how and what’s been torn down.”

His sister remembers one of those detours back in the 1980s, when he was driving her to Las Vegas. It lasted two weeks.

“He said he had a few spots he wanted me to see,” she says, laughing.

As they drove, Fisher says, they’d stop and he’d snap pictures of the way rocks were layered on cliffs, how the sun made shadows on mountains or how veins twisted and turned on a leaf.

Mazurkewicz is a private man, sharing details about himself as slowly and as carefully as he etches precious metal. But the details do come.

He’s grateful he never married. If he had, he would never have been able to focus the way he has on his work, to spend his evenings turning his ideas over in his mind.

2008, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.