Back in the summer of ’69, a couple years after he was almost locked up in a maximum-security prison, David Clarkson arrived in West Marin with the nickname “Flower,” an old banjo and just enough money to open a jewelry store with a buddy from the East Coast.
He established his original shop in Marshall, but two decades later he moved it to Point Reyes Station, where it has flourished for 32 years. Aside from the time he got held up at gunpoint and bound with duct tape, it’s been a happy, peaceful stay.
Last week, Mr. Clarkson turned over the Point Reyes Jeweler to a new owner, Lilia Ramachandran, who gave it a new name: Werkstatt. That means workshop in German—a language in which she is fluent after shuttling back and forth between Fairfax and Hamburg for most of her 33 years.
Mr. Clarkson, who recently turned 80, will continue to work part time at the back of the store, designing, selling and repairing jewelry as he has for more than half a century. Ms. Ramachandran, a highly trained goldsmith, will showcase her own jewelry and the clothing and artwork of Bay Area artists and artisans at the front of the store. She has been gradually transitioning the shop since April, displaying the work of talented people who need the exposure.
The shift works well for Mr. Clarkson. He had considered retiring but wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to the shop, where he has formed personal connections with generations of devoted customers, more than 1,000 of whom have purchased his handcrafted wedding rings.
“There are so many people who come back to say hello because they’ve been wearing something that I made on their finger for all of their married lives,” he said. “I have meaning in their lives, and that really touches me.”
Mr. Clarkson became a jeweler by happenstance after getting busted on a marijuana charge in 1964 and nearly sentenced to a year in Attica, the notorious New York prison where 43 people died in a 1971 riot. All this for possessing two nickel bags of weed—less than half an ounce.
He got off with a $150 fine and six months of probation after a sympathetic sheriff asked the judge to relent. Nevertheless, he was expelled from college.
A few years later, after spending time in Europe, Mr. Clarkson moved to Cambridge, Mass., where he took a job for a contract lighting company—not his passion, but something to pay the bills. He left the job when friends got him hired at a jewelry store where they worked. He soon learned the craft that would become his life’s work.
Like Mr. Clarkson, one of those colleagues was a folk music aficionado, and, like flower children from across the nation in those days, they decided to move to the Bay Area. They both played banjo, and Mr. Clarkson later took up the mandolin.
With Mr. Clarkson’s long hair held in place by a headband, they set off for Marshall, the home of another folkie and dulcimer maker they had heard about.
“It turned out that he had left about three months before we got there, and we wound up renting the building that he had been in,” Mr. Clarkson recalled. “There were a lot of warped oak dulcimer fret boards that we used for firewood that winter, because it was a very drafty, cold building. The place needed an incredible amount of work.”
They managed to transform it into both a home and a jewelry shop, and by the time they finished fixing it up, Mr. Clarkson’s bank account was nearly empty. But the Highway 1 location, with tourists streaming by, was great for business.
“We opened our doors, and we were a success immediately. And we’ve paid our way ever since,” he said.
The shop was conveniently situated just up the road from what was then the Marshall Hotel, the only other business in sight and a magnet for lovebirds.
“These couples would come up from San Francisco and have a night of hot sex,” Mr. Clarkson said with a smile. “They would wake up in the morning and have more hot sex. Then they would walk out the door, look to the left and see nothing, look to the right and see a jewelry store.”
He couldn’t have asked for better customers. Despite the promising start, however, Mr. Clarkson’s partner, a quirky Scottish fellow, left town with his wife just one year later. Although Mr. Clarkson has been a sole proprietor ever since, he hasn’t worked alone.
“All the way along, I’ve had help here in the shop,” Mr. Clarkson said, sitting on a stool and hammering a pair of his trademark gold hoop earrings on his penultimate day as owner. “I’ve had a succession of people I’ve worked with, gallery managers and apprentices, none of whom left under any kind of cloud.”
After he got married and became a dad, Mr. Clarkson moved the store from Marshall to Point Reyes Station. “I figured I needed a bigger business to support my family,” he said. (He and his wife, Cynthia Clarkson, have since divorced but remain close friends.)
Business in Point Reyes was good—especially after he took out an advertisement in the Sunday magazine of the San Francisco Chronicle, then in its heyday.
“I love making wedding rings,” it said. “I’d like to make yours.”
The ad was a hit. Among those who saw it were Phil and Sherri Wilhite, who picked up the paper one Sunday morning in 2010, while they were eating breakfast out in San Francisco. They had been together for seven years and decided it was finally time to tie the knot. They hopped in the car and drove up to Point Reyes, where Mr. Clarkson made them a pair of wedding bands to match Sherri’s engagement ring.
“He was very attentive,” Mr. Wilhite said. “He did a great job. Aside from his skill as an artist making such detailed work, he’s just a great listener, and he really keeps the customer in mind.”
To this day, the Wilhites drive up from their house in Richmond to visit Point Reyes Station from time to time, and whenever they do, they go to the bookstore, the record store, the pizza place and Mr. Clarkson’s shop.
Another of his happy customers is Mara Nelson, a longtime Point Reyes Station resident and owner of Cover Girls Upholstery. She and her husband, Axel, are “rockhounds,” she said, always searching for pretty stones in the great outdoors or buying them from time to time.
They had purchased some tanzanite—a stunning stone that can appear blue or violet, depending on the light—at a store in San Francisco. Mr. Clarkson mounted three of the stones in a finely etched gold oval, which he attached at a vertical angle atop a brushed gold ring. He made the piece some 50 years ago, and by any standard it’s gorgeous.
“He’s very creative,” Ms. Nelson said. “He’s got a real talent and a real gift, and I consider him just generally a wonderful person. He’s open, honest and gentle.”
Ms. Nelson appreciates Mr. Clarkson’s casual style, which she considers quintessentially West Marin. He favors orange Crocs, work pants and suspenders that complement his blue eyes, bushy white hair and white goatee.
“He doesn’t dress up for work,” Ms. Nelson said. “He’s like a lot of us—we are of this place in our soul. And when you are so rooted in a place and so comfortable, you don’t have to get all fussy about it. It’s just part of you.”
His casual approach has served him well, as did the advertisement he used to run in the back of the New Yorker magazine featuring a photo of his classic clasp bracelet—a simple, elegant piece that he makes in silver or gold and sells for $180.
Like the clasp, his work is generally moderately priced. For all its charm, after all, the place isn’t Tiffany’s.
But that didn’t deter the three thieves who entered his shop in 2015, one of whom pressed the barrel of a semi-automatic handgun against his chest and backed him into a closet. They handcuffed him and bound his arms and legs with duct tape.
After they left, Mr. Clarkson managed to flip-flop his way to the front door, wriggling like a seal. A passing tourist heard his screams and called the sheriff.
The thieves robbed the place in broad daylight on a Saturday morning with the farmers’ market in full swing, and they didn’t bother to lock the door. But they cleaned the place out.
“I lost three rings that I treasured,” Mr. Clarkson said. “One was a simple, old, cut diamond ring that I had inherited from my family and which I wore frequently. Another was a large rainbow moonstone gold ring with the most fantastic colors—as good as any opal I have ever seen.”
It took some work to get over the P.T.S.D., but Mr. Clarkson has put the episode, and the ensuing nightmares, behind him. His community of loyal customers kept him afloat, and he built back his inventory piece by piece.
“This summer has been the busiest one I’ve ever had,” he said. “The demand for my work has been higher than ever.”
Mr. Clarkson figures the influx of customers was partly the result of a very hot summer that prompted tourists to flock to West Marin to beat the heat. But he also attributes the increase to Ms. Ramachandran’s efforts over the last few months.“Lilia has made an attractive display that attracts people,” he said.
For her part, Ms. Ramachandran is happy that Mr. Clarkson intends to stay on while she puts her own imprint on the shop—not replacing what he has built but moving it into a new phase.
“He can work here as long as he wants to,” she said. “It’s really, really nice for us to work side by side. We can rely on each other.”
Mr. Clarkson is pleased the shop will henceforth be helmed by someone with a more modern sensibility—someone who prefers social media to a landline.
“I’m an old hippie, and I’m still doing business the old hippie way,” he said. “She tells people not to call her on the phone but to follow her on Instagram.”