Seated at a well-worn bench in a Hamburg goldsmith’s atelier, apprentice Lilia Ramachandran painstakingly practiced the art of granulation for months on end. The technique, said to date back some five millennia to Sumerian goldsmiths in Mesopotamia, achieves ornate patterns through the application of minute grains of gold to a metal surface—a skill revered among craftspeople as both a technical and artistic tour de force.
Now, Ms. Ramachandran has brought her knowledge to Werkstatt—German for “workshop”—her newly reimagined jewelry store and gallery in Point Reyes Station, where her creations share space with those of local artisans.
Eschewing new technologies like 3-D printing, laser engraving and computer-generated designs, which hold sway in much of the jewelry world today, Ms. Ramachandran, who is 33, is committed to centuries-old techniques infused with a thoroughly modern sensibility.
“I honestly love change,” she said one morning last week while sitting at her work bench, whose built-in leather apron is designed to catch precious waste. “I’m always willing to try something new because you can always redo it if it doesn’t work. Nothing is permanent, and that is a beautiful thing.”
As she spoke, she used a rabbit’s foot to sweep the fine particles of gold that had collected at her station into a small jar. It’s a tool that was used by goldsmiths in the Middle Ages, chosen not just for its good luck, but for its dense fur that can trap even the finest aureate fleck.
Over the past year, Ms. Ramachandran has assumed control of the space long occupied by the Point Reyes Jeweler and remade it into Werkstatt. Gone are the mint-green tablecloths and peach-hued walls, replaced by a crisp coat of white paint inside and a slate-black matte finish outside. It’s a new identity devised for a shop where craft and artistry take centerstage.
“In Germany, there’s a huge reverence for any kind of handcraft, and infrastructure in place to ensure that knowledge endures,” she said. “I want to help cultivate that kind of respect for makers and artists here.”
Ms. Ramachandran describes her philosophy as an abiding faith in the value of raw materials and the artistry of shaping them by hand, using techniques handed down through generations to produce something built to last. “I care as much about what goes on the shelves as the stories behind the people making these wonderful things,” she said.
Born in Hamburg to a German father and an American mother, Ms. Ramachandran moved to Fairfax at age 7. Her mother, an army brat who grew up partly in Germany, returned on a post-college trip and met Ms. Ramachandran’s father. “It’s that old trope of the beautiful blonde American falling for the German punk rocker,” she said.
A childhood spent tinkering with beads, metal, clay and yarn presaged her professional calling. In her teenage years, she and a group of older friends founded a space in Fairfax, called the Garage, to peddle their handmade wares. Around that time, she fashioned her first piece of jewelry: a pendant of her three-legged cat.
Eventually, Ms. Ramachandran returned to Germany to study at the Goldschmiedeschule in the southern city of Pforzheim. “It’s one of the last of its kind,” she said of the five-year program, which balances formal trade school with years of on-the-bench apprenticeships. In addition to alloying, casting, hammering, fusing and soldering, she learned to polish and set stones, engrave by hand, and practice filigree and repoussé.
She has brought this deep reservoir of goldsmithing skills back to Werkstatt, though only a small portion of its display space features her own pieces. More room is devoted to the work of fellow makers.
“Everyone she knows is a maker of some sort,” said fiber artist Meredith Law, who sells plant-dyed textiles and needle-felted landscapes in the shop. “A musician, a chef, a seamstress, a fine artist. She wanted to do something that brought all those people together and gave them resources.”
By the time Ms. Ramachandran returned to the Bay Area in 2019, many of her close friends had left, priced out by rents that made it impossible to survive on an artist’s income.
“I can’t change the fact that we’re in late-stage capitalism, where younger generations are absolutely f-cked,” she said. “But there is a little something I can do. It’s small, but it’s about community building. It’s joyful, it fulfills me, and it’s creating an environment where I can support the artist living next door or just down the road.”
Walking through her shop, trailed by her cattle dog, Iggy, she rattled off some of the names: Emma Casey, who repurposes used sails into rugged bags; Paul Gaffney, who distills local flora into small-batch incense; Heide Calderon, who strings delicate seed bead necklaces. “I had a massive crush on her son in middle school,” she laughed. “That’s how I originally met Heide.”
Miniature oil paintings by Jeffrey Beauchamp capture sweeping horizons in palm-sized frames. Plein-air landscapes by Point Reyes Station artist Eric Whitten depict the endless green, purple, red and brown hues of West Marin’s meadows and chaparral.
Mr. Whitten recently sold a painting titled “Creamery Bay” for $2,600 to a couple celebrating their wedding; his 60 percent share of the proceeds, he said, was 10 percent more than the standard gallery split.
“Artists are terrible salespeople,” he remarked, noting his gratitude for Ms. Ramachandran’s approach. “Through her place, you get connected to this web of people—and that’s all because of Lilia.”
Ms. Ramachandran’s own jewelry stands out for its simultaneous delicacy and durability. She begins by heating silver, copper and 24-karat gold granules in a crucible to create her favored 18-karat alloy—a gleaming shade of warm yellow. Rather than relying on compressed air, she employs a blowpipe, using her breath to control the intensity of the torch flame.
Once the metal is molten and cast, she rolls the resulting ingots into sheets—using what resembles an oversized pasta maker—or draws them through steel plates to stretch them into wire. “First and foremost, I want to make something that’s long-lasting, something people can wear for generations,” she said. “Then we can worry about what’s pretty. I don’t see the point of making something that looks good if it’s going to break.”
That philosophy attracted Kristina Dutton and Dunstan Orchard, an Inverness couple, to the store. When they married at San Francisco’s city hall eight years ago, they decided against wedding rings.
“We never prioritized wedding bands and aren’t really jewelry people,” Ms. Dutton said. Yet in January, each separately wandered into Werkstatt and found themselves drawn to the goldsmith’s craft.
When clients come in for custom pieces, Ms. Ramachandran begins with detailed conversations, after which she shares sketches. Once the design is agreed upon, she sets to work crafting the piece. “She listens and really understands what a client wants,” Mr. Orchard said. “But she also explains how each choice affects the piece’s longevity.”
The resulting bands, crafted from 18-karat gold, are at once classic and distinctive: hers is slender and slightly burnished, his is wider, with a muted matte finish. “It feels like we’re wearing tiny, personalized artworks that have become part of our life story,” Ms. Dutton said.
Werkstatt is open from noon to 5 p.m. Fridays through Mondays at 11101 Highway 1, in Point Reyes Station. Her work is on Instagram @werkstattpointreyes.