Jessop Jewelers of San Diego, CA: Company history

[rathbonemuseum.com]

The Jessop's jewerly store finally closed in San Diego after 125 year of being in business. Here is this great article from the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2017 memorializing its passing (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/growth-development/sd-fi-jessop-20171103-story.html)

 

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Jessop’s, where four generations of San Diegans have ordered their wedding rings, brought their clocks and sterling silver to be repaired and picked up custom-built sailing trophies, is going out of business after 125 years.

Jim Jessop, 65, announced closing plans of one of the city’s oldest businesses at Thursday’s San Diego Rotary Club.

“I’m looking forward to retiring and I have a lot of things that I hope to accomplish,” he told several hundred Rotarians at Liberty Station. “But it’s really sad to see the Jessop store close.”

 

He said he’s leaving because no other Jessop, including his three sons, was interested in taking over the store.

RELATED: Next generation preferred tech and mushrooms to jewels

“At one time there were 11 Jessops in Jessop’s stores and I’m the one remaining jeweler,” he said. “I could keep doing it until I’m 80, but it wouldn’t have been fun.”

 

After a going-out-of-business sale kicks off next week at the store at 401 W. C St., Jessop said he will also find a permanent place for the family’s 110-year-old street clock.

Located on the main level of Westfield Horton Plaza since 1985, the 22-foot-tall Jessop’s clock needs to move because Westfield is considering redeveloping or selling the shopping center.

Jessop’s great-grandfather, Joseph Jessop, designed the clock based on one he’d seen in Switzerland. A staff machinist, Claude E. Ledger, spent 15 months building it in a foundry at the downtown jewelry store.

He incorporated 17 locally mined jewels of tourmaline, topaz, jade and agate and built 20 faces, including 12 showing times in principal cities around the world, from New York to Europe, Asia and Australia.

It was erected at the store’s Fifth Avenue store south of Broadway in 1907 and moved 20 years later north of Broadway when a new store opened there.

Jessop said he has three new prominent but secure downtown locations in mind and hopes to turn the clock over to a nonprofit such as the San Diego Foundation or San Diego History Center. He also hopes to secure funding in perpetuity to maintain and refurbish the clock as needed.

“It’s always been downtown and has never left downtown,” he said.

The city declared it Historic Site. No. 372 in 1998.

Jessop graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor’s degree in business marketing and is a graduate gemologist and certified gemologist appraiser. He said he still enjoys finding the perfect item for customers, “giving it to them and have them just light up,” he said.

But after 44 years of six-day workweeks, he looks forward to extended vacations — including a possible stop in the English countryside where his great-grandfather, then 13, apprenticed as a watchmaker to his uncle in the 1860s.

He also said he expects to spend time with his sons’ families in the San Francisco Bay area and take extended cruises on his boat docked at the San Diego Yacht Club. He also will remain active in the jewelry business, advising long-time customers, attending jewelry shows and buying and selling items privately.

The store’s six employees have yet to settle on what they will do after the store closes sometime next year. The long-term lease in the Emerald Plaza building will expire March 31 but can be continued on a month-to-month basis.

Jessop’s got its start when Joseph Jessop immigrated with his wife and seven children from England in 1890 for health reasons. He tried farming for two years in the Miramar area before returning to watch repair in 1892. He opened his first downtown store the following year. He died at age 81 in 1932.

After World War II his sons opened satellite stores around the county and then sold to Dayton-Hudson retail chain in 1970. Ultimately there were 11 Jessop stores that a later owner closed in the 1990s.

Jessop’s father, George Carter Jessop, opened a store under his own name in 1973 and Jim Jessop took it over in 1987. He purchased the “Jessop Jeweler” name back a decade later.

Earlier this week, Jessop sent about 2,500 invitations to long-time customers for a three-day presale that will take place next week. The public sale, with prices knocked down as much as 70 percent, will begin Nov. 17. He said the sale will end when all 3,000 pieces of jewelry and precious gem stones, estimated at $3.5 million, are sold.

Store hours will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday with an extra hour on Thursday nights.

Information is available at jessopjeweler.com or (619) 234-4137.

[rathbonemuseum.com]

Jessop bling flickers out: Next generation prefers tech and mushrooms

By Roger Showley

San Diego Union-Tribune

Nov 12, 2017 at 11:05 am

Joseph Jessop, left, and his sons, Armand, Alonzo, Richard, George and Joseph E. (Courtesy Jessop Jeweler)

 

Jessop Jeweler has had a 125-year glittery run since the family patriarch left England and made a killing in gold, diamonds and real estate in San Diego.

Jessop’s made bling for a pope, prince, vice president, admiral and aerospace hero — not to mention four generations of families shopping for wedding bands, birthday necklaces and baby cups. Serra Mesa resident Dorothy Wicks, 91, said she still has the engagement ring her father bought for her mother in 1917. “All his life, he shopped at Jessop’s,” Wicks said. “He went for the finest. He took me there to buy my first wristwatch and made me pay for it so I’d appreciate it.” But on Thursday, James Jessop, the family’s sixth-generation jeweler, called it quits.

 

At 65 and a rough-water swimmer in top shape, Jessop said his three sons never showed any interest in the business. Andrew, 35, is a Lawrence Livermore Laboratory test engineer; Bryan, 32, a professional mushroom collector; and Carter, 30, an EPA mines expert, all in the San Francisco Bay area. Running a jewelry store was not on their radar. “Jessop's is closing but many of the Jessop family remain in the city, continuing good work and supporting a great legacy of the families’ good work,” he said. “And of course the Jessop clock remains a Jessop family historical monument to the city of San Diego’s great history.” That 22-foot-tall street clock, built in 1907 and currently located on the main level of Westfield Horton Plaza, displays the time in 12 cities around the world — a reminder to passersby that the family business counts clients worldwide.

 

Jessop blamed online selling for making it harder to sell family businesses. The grueling store hours can dissuade sons and daughters who hear about retail woes at the kitchen table every night. G.T. Frost, a longtime friend of Jessop’s who heads Frost Hardware Lumber, says the fourth generation of his family has stepped up to prepare to take over that 106-year-old business in the Miramar area. “It doesn’t just happen — you have to work hard to keep your edge to make it a viable company,” Frost said. Carmen Bianchi, a lecturer in family business at San Diego State University, said she is working with a family in China that’s been in the precious stone trade for many generations and now focuses on commercial real estate. A fifth-generation San Diego family she consults has gone from rock quarrying to real estate development. But she said most family businesses peter out after the third generation. “What happens is children go into careers of their own,” she said. “They don’t follow the careers of their parents. It’s not like it used to be and the expectation is not there anymore.”

 

The Jessop family bought the 50-acre Burton Ranch in the Miramar area and Joseph Jessop repaired watches between farming and cattle ranching. (Courtesy Jessop family )

 

The Jessop family story resembles that of many immigrants looking for a better life in America. Joseph Jessop, born in 1851 in West Yorkshire, dropped out of school at age 9 to help his struggling parents get by. They died when he was 14 and by then he was learning watchmaking from his uncle, who had learned it from his uncle. But Joseph wasn’t in good health. Following a doctor’s advice, he and his family moved to California in 1890, tried farming for two years near publisher E.W. Scripps Miramar Ranch and then turned back to watch repairs. In 1893 Joseph and his oldest son, Armand, opened a 15-by-20-foot small shop that rented for $15 per month at 417 F St. They slept in the backroom and rode three hours back to Miramar by horse and buggy on the weekends. Their earliest success was rowing out to boats anchored in the harbor to repair chronometers. They moved to larger stores in 1896, 1906 and 1927. The family moved to Golden Hill in 1898 and Coronado in 1900, kept the ranch and bought other real estate in later years.

 

This postcard depicts the bejeweled presentation box that Jessop's made to present to the admiral of the 1908 "Great White Fleet" that visited San Diego on its world-wide cruise. (Courtesy Jessop family)

 

Among the many pieces made of silver, gold and precious stone, Jessop’s significant creations include:

- A gold-encrusted baptismal font made out of giant clam shells in 1907 for St. James-by-the-Sea Church in La Jolla;

- A jewel-encrusted presentation chest box for Admiral R.D. Evans, who steered President Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” to San Diego Bay in 1908;

- Sterling silver badges for Balboa Park’s Panama-California Exposition in 1915; and,

- A sterling silver model of the San Diego-built “Spirit of St. Louis” for Charles Lindbergh, who returned in triumph to San Diego after flying solo across the Atlantic in 1927.

- A wedding band for Vice President Alben Barkley in 1949.

 

The jewelry business requires extreme dedication to detail. But in the 1920s, Jessop’s apparently slipped up. Civic organist Humphrey Stewart ordered a silver baby cup destined for a young couple and a silver decanter for the pope, possibly Pius XI, whom he knew. But the decanter went to the couple with a note, “Have a few nips on me,” and the pope got a note with the baby cup that said, “Congratulations, I hope you have many more.” “Jessop’s had some explaining to do on that one,” said Joseph E. Jessop, youngest son of the company founder, in a 1981 family history. Joseph, the elder, died in 1932 and five of the sons, Armand, Alonzo, Richard, George and Joseph the younger, carried on, each specializing in one facet of the business and taking turns as company president.

 

After World War II, they began opening branch stores, starting with La Jolla in 1949, and employed well over 100 staff. They and their wives took part in many civic institutions and causes and their children and grandchildren remain active today. But by 1970 the principals started to retire and they sold the company to Dayton-Hudson, a Minneapolis department store (Target) and jeweler. More Jessop’s outlets opened before Jessop’s was sold twice more and later closed Meanwhile, George Carter Jessop Jr., opened a store under his own name in 1973 and his son, Jim, joined it after graduating from San Diego State University. Jim assumed control in 1987 and regained the “Jessop Jeweler” trade name a decade later.

 

A liquidation sale for the public will begin Friday with about 3,000 items worth about $3.5 million available — some new and some more than 150 years old.

The Jessop's street clock has been in Westfield Horton Plaza since 1985. (Howard Lipin /U-T) Located outside Jessop’s downtown stores, the Jessop clock was first conceived by store founder Joseph when he and his wife Mary visited Bern, Switzerland, about 1888 and admired the city’s many clocks. A particular street clock caught his eye and in 1905 he carried out plans to design a similar piece. His mechanic and watchmaker, Claude Ledger, spent 15 months building the clock in the onsite foundry and incorporating 17 jewels — tourmaline, topaz, jade and agate, mined by the family — and 20 dials, 12 of which tell the time of principal cities around the world. The mainspring is wound up by electricity every eight hours. The master clock was exhibited at the Sacramento state fair in 1907 and won a gold medal. The clock was moved into Westfield Horton Plaza in 1985 when the Jessop’s store relocated from Fifth Avenue. That store has since closed

 

Three stories elevate the clock’s history to urban legend. When Ledger died on March 22, 1935, the clock stopped, although no mechanical failure could be found. The story made it into Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” newspaper column. The same thing happened when another longtime caretaker, Bill Wemer, died on April 13, 2009. Joseph Jessop once asked a San Diego Gas & Electric official how the power plant timed the noontime, 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. whistles. The official said he passed by the clock daily and set his watch accordingly. “Well,” Jessop supposedly replied, “we set the clock by the whistle.” A third story holds that a youngster was so enchanted by the clockworks at the state fair that he stuck a tiny bear into the escapement so it could take a “ride” on the clock. He couldn’t retrieve it and it’s been riding there ever since — except, as Jim Jessop said, when the clock was dismantled and refurbished. The Jessop family still owns the clock and has been seeking a permanent home ever since Westfield Horton Plaza indicated it might redevelop or sell the shopping center. Jim Jessop said he has three downtown locations in mind and hopes to reach an agreement to move it to a secure but publicly accessible site in a few months and to set up a nonprofit that will operate and maintain the clock in perpetuity.

 

Jessops made this "Opening Day" trophy clock that sits above the fireplace at the San Diego Yacht Club, which Jessop family members founded and served as commodores over the last century. (Roger Showley/U-T)

 

1851: Joseph Jessop born April 11 in Kirkburton.

1865: He is apprenticed to his uncle George to learn watch making; his parents die within a year.

1870: Jessop marries Mary Carter, also of Kirkburton, and they eventually have 12 children, two of whom die in childhood.

1871: Jessop opens his first watch repair shop in his inlaws’ home and his own shop a few months later.

1881: He moves to Lytham for better weather and opens a store along with his sons Amand and Alonzo.

1890: The family of nine moves to California to improve Jessop’s health and buys the 50-acre Burton Ranch in the Miramar, just west of today’s Interstate 15. He declares his intention to become a U.S. citizen within a month. Three more children are born in the U.S.

1892: To augment meager revenue from cattle ranching and farming, Jessop sets up a more lucrative watch repair business at a work bench, employing tools he’d brought from England.

1893: Jessop and his son Armand open a store at 417 F St., relocate to 910 Fifth Ave. in 1896, 952 Fifth in 1906 and 1041 Fifth in 1927.

1905: Mary dies; 1932, Joseph dies.

1949: La Jolla store opens, followed by North Park (1952), Chula Vista (1956), Mission Valley (1961), Escondido (1964), College Grove (1968) and Chula Vista Shopping Center (1969).

1970: J. Jessop & Sons chain sold to Dayton-Hudson; 1982, to Henry Birks Ltd; and 1990, Gordon Brothers of Houston, which later closes all the stores.

1973: George Carter Jessop Jr. opens his own store downtown, a second at Hotel del Coronado in 1977, and relocates to the present site in Emerald Plaza building, 401 C. St., in 1991.

1974: James Jessop joins the firm and buys the business from his father in 1987.

1997: James buys the “Jessop Jeweler” name back and store once again becomes “Jessop’s.”

2017: James announces he is closing the business and holds a going-out-of-business sale with the intention of shutting down in early 2018.

2018: Jessop street clock expected to be relocated from Wesfield Horton Plaza to a permanent downtown location.