Ted Allen's Jewellery

Ted Allen’s Jewellery is at 431 Baker Street in Nelson, the same address Nelson’s first jewellery store opened at in 1896. Five jewellers have kept it since: J.J. Walker, John Balfour Gray, Howard Butterfield, Ted and Greg Allen, and since 2006 Justin Pelant, a certified gemologist. None of them ever moved. Two of Walker’s round glass and mahogany cases still stand at the front of the store, holding today’s pieces.

The shop sells fine and custom jewellery and watches, repairs both, and writes appraisals for insurance and estates. They called on October 23 about a new site. The first screen of it went up that day, and the next day they went ahead with one page: the shop’s history, its own photographs of the store and its work, and a dashboard so the shop can change any of it.

The first screen opens on the headline: five jewellers have kept this shop since 1896. Across the foot of the screen is a brass plaque with a mark for each of them punched into it, drawn from their initials in the shapes old makers’ marks came in: an oval, a shield, a canted oblong, an octagon and a circle. Their names and years are engraved underneath, and the marks strike one at a time as the page opens. The phone number is set large on the same screen, beside the button for a custom piece.

Then the work: eight pieces from the shop in the shop’s own photographs, with what each one is set in written underneath. Custom pieces carry a small label. Tap one and it opens large.

Custom design comes first in what the shop does, in a panel of its own beside one of their own CAD drawings. A ring is drawn up on screen, with a quote and a timeline, before anything is made, and your own gold can go into the new piece. The form in the panel asks what the piece is and sends it to the shop to set a time for the free consultation. If it can’t send, the visitor gets the message as a ready-written email, with the phone number beside it. The other services follow, a line each.

The shop’s story comes last, told from the source: “5 Jewellers, 100 Years at 431 Baker Street”, from the Nelson Daily News of December 6, 1996. The building went up around 1890 and was a bank first. When the bank moved out in 1896, J.J. Walker came over from Rossland and opened the store. Beside the story are one of his cases and the shopfront on Baker Street.