Stewart Jones hand-fabricates jewelry in 18-karat gold and platinum, one piece at a time, and sees customers by appointment. He kept a shop in Portland, then a jewelry and art gallery in Lake Oswego, and moved with his wife, Catherine Matthias, to Joseph in 1999. In 1978 his domed gold and diamond ring took first place in the DeBeers Diamonds International Awards in Paris. A gold and diamond belt buckle won an honorable mention in the DeBeers Diamonds Today Awards USA in 1980, and in 1987 the Gold Information Center in New York gave a multilayered gold pin its Certificate of Outstanding Design.
How a craft business works here, in his own account: the Lake Oswego gallery had run ten years when the two of them found Joseph, and within ten months they had set up shop in it. What made the move possible was that a tourist town brings customers from across the country, that nearly thirty years of clients kept in touch, that local people bought from him, that his suppliers of precious metals and gemstones had worked with him by mail for decades, and that Catherine ran the business side. In 2022 they sold their downtown building, closed the gallery and moved the jewelry work home, where he keeps an office, a studio and a shop, makes one-of-a-kind pieces and repairs jewelry. What people get wrong, he says, is to think he has retired.
Reviewed by Stewart Jones, November 9, 2026. The business has read this record and said so.
Through time
First place, DeBeers Diamonds International Awards, Paris, for a domed gold and diamond ring.
Stewart Jones and Catherine Matthias move the business from Lake Oswego to Joseph.
The downtown building is sold, the gallery closed, and the jewelry work moves to a studio at home.
