The Artisans Keeping the Soul of Charleston’s King Street Alive

In this special four-part series, join Unpacked host Aislyn Greene as she travels to ⁠Charleston, South Carolina⁠, to unpack the city’s deeper currents.

This week: Step onto King Street, Charleston’s iconic retail corridor, where three centuries of commerce come alive. From century-old family businesses to contemporary local makers, discover how Charleston’s shopping scene preserves history while embracing innovation—one handcrafted treasure at a time.

Transcript

Brian Turner, CEO Preservation Society of Charleson: You know, a lot of people talk about the old and historic district and the grand old houses, but the first time I walked down King Street, my jaw dropped. There’s very few places in America, maybe in the world, that have that quality of architecture.

Rhett Ramsay Outten, co-owner Croghan’s Jewel Box: We’ve been on King Street since 1907. It’s had some dark times, but King Street has been very important to Charleston.

Gary Flynn, CEO and co-owner M. Dumas & Sons: So King Street is kinda like the lifeline. It’s the center of Charleston, literally and figuratively.

Aislyn: I am Aislyn Greene, and in this Unpacked mini I’m taking you on a tour of some of the best and most historic places. To shop on Charleston’s iconic King Street. This is the third episode in a special four-part Unpacked series that explores Charleston’s deeper currents. We’ve unpacked its waterways and dipped a tine into the food scene. And this week we’re setting out on a sartorial safari, hanging out with jewelers at the city’s oldest family run jewelry business, and exploring a treasure trove of made-in-Charleston gifts.

I start my King Street shopping journey at M. Dumas & Sons, one of the businesses that has watched King Street evolve since Dumas and Sons was founded in 1917.

I enter and am greeted by CEO and co-owner Gary Flynn, who ushers me to a fitting room area filled with vintage mannequins and other clothing related heirlooms.

Gary: So M. Dumas & Sons—here’s actually an M, his name was Mendel Dumas—and his sons Abe and Joe. I started a store on King Street back in 1917, so we’re 108 years old now.

Aislyn: So three generations of people attiring the men of Charleston.

Gary: That’s right. David Dumas is my business partner. We’re co-owners together, and it’s his grandparents store. They’re the people who started it.

Aislyn: I asked Gary to explain the layout and psychology of King Street, which feels like it has different personalities as you migrate up or down.

Gary: If you were to rise above Charleston, it’s a peninsula and King Street runs right down the spine of the peninsula. So we’re right dead center in the, in the middle of it. And it’s about three miles long where it’s mostly retail. But there’s three different distinct zones of King Street. There’s Upper King, there’s Middle King, and there’s Lower King, and we sit in the middle part of King and the middle part of King is mostly the clothing shops, mostly. Upper King is mostly restaurants and bars and nightclubs and whatnot. And Lower King is again, mostly, or originally was more like home furnishings and antiques, so that they kind of have different flavors, um, in different parts of the street.

Aislyn: M. Dumas and Sons started small, but eventually it Goldilocksed its way into the space they’re in now, where they’ve been since 1973. The business itself has also evolved.

Gary: That’s one of the things I’m most enamored about this brand and this company is how many times we’ve evolved and how quick we are to change and how much change is part of our story. You know, during the wars, we used to sell uniforms to the Navy, but coming out of that, we sold work wear clothing to local businesses and we would sell them their Dickies and put a patch on it for the, for, [like] “Hey, my name’s Joe.” That was a big part of what we were for a long time.

And then we evolved again coming out of World War II. People were coming back from the West Coast and they came in and asked like, “You ever heard of this little brand that, that they’re messing with back there?” [We were like] um, like, “No, what, what is that?” Oh, it’s called Levi Strauss.”

And we’re like, “oh, OK. That’s interesting. You want us to buy that? OK, we’ll buy that and we’ll put it in the store.” And we turned into the number one Levi dealer in the state.

Aislyn: The store still has some denim, but no uniforms, at least not in the traditional sense. There’s a heritage corner with brands like Duck Head and Filson that speaks to the company’s history as an outfitter store.

There’s casual wear and a section for sports coats and more business-like attire. And there is a luxury section where an Italian brand is having a trunk show as we speak. And Gary, he’s dressed for it.

Gary: This is a brand called Castangia, and they’re from Southern Italy. We’ve carried this brand now for about, oh, about two years. So that’s what this coat is and I, I pulled it out special today because Todd was here today.

Aislyn: And it’s colorful, you know, I would say like what, how would you describe the colors?

Gary: Yeah, it’s kind of fall colors, but then there’s a little bit of pink running through it, which kind of brings it up a little bit, which is what I liked about it.

A pocket square here that I pulled a little pink out of that. And then there’s, you know, a lot of creams and berries and kinda rusty and olivey kind of tones running through it.

Aislyn: I love that the pattern mixing with the polka dot shirt we have underneath, it’s very, it’s. Just fun to walk in and watch people having, enjoying their clothing.

Gary: Yeah. That’s the—the team here likes to have fun with the clothes.

Aislyn: I tell Gary how much I’ve enjoyed the fashion in Charleston, especially when it comes to the men.

Gary: It’s a dressier town than people think. Especially when you go to the nicer restaurants in town. People come thinking, This is a beach community. It’ll be casual, be laidback. And then they go to dinner at Halls [Chophouse] and they’re like, “Oh my God. I was way underdressed.” Back to the style of Charleston. What I would consider Charleston is colorful but dressy, and it doesn’t have to be a sports coat and or a suit, but it is in a lot of cases.

A lot of people think that America has gotten much more casual and their clothing has gotten more casual and that’s true. But then there’s still a guy that wants to dress up and depart from that. And thankfully Charleston is, is kind of known for that. But other things we’ve been known for: searsucker suits were a big thing for a long time and bowties have been a big thing for us in our past. And navy blazer, khaki suit or khaki pant, and a white shirt with a bowtie on it. That was like the uniform for a lot, a lot of years. And now thankfully we have a little bit more options than that.

Aislyn: Now it’s time for a spin around the floor to see some of those options. The store does carry these wonderful Italian and European brands. But on our tour, Gary focuses on the local brands. There’s Folly.

Gary: Three guys that live over on Daniel Island that are trying to think about the golf business differently than a normal person would. ’cause they come at it from a different angle. One was a, um, more of a surfer. One was more of a skier, and one was more of like a skater. And so now they’re coming at golf because they all like to play golf. But they look at it differently. It doesn’t need to be so preppy, necessarily.

Aislyn: Yeah, there’s some like a polo shirt with cocktails, skulls, little golf carts. It looks very playful.

And another kind of sporty brand called Harlestons.

Gary: Harleston [Village] is actually a neighborhood in Charleston. It’s just kind of, you know, a few blocks off of where we are. But back in the day, the very first golf course in America was in Harleston. So, uh, some local guys thought they wanted to tell that story and bring it back to life through product. And so they’re doing their thing.

And then we’ve got these shuckers here that are from a company called the Charleston Shucker Company. And so oysters are a big, uh, is a big part of our culture here as well. That doubles as a weapon, but it’s actually a shucker.

Aislyn: Don’t take that in your carry-on.

Gary: Right? Yeah. No.

Aislyn: M. Dumas even has its own line of shirts.

Gary: See the palmetto and crescent moon? Well that’s the state flag. And so we put that on a lot of clothing here too. Our own private label M. Dumas shirts have it embroidered on the chest. We pull the color out of whatever the pattern is and try to compliment that with the color that we put the palmetto and crescent moon in. And look at how beautiful that old Dumas label is.

Aislyn: The label is this really handsome embroidered scene that speaks to the M. Dumas heritage.

Gary: So there’s ducks flying, uh, on the label itself, and a little bit of kinda a marsh area there as well. And then the old M. Dumas and Sons logo is there, and then just Charleston, South Carolina. So that label has been in use here for decades and decades and decades.

Aislyn: Finally, we get to meet George, a very dapper salesman I’ve been admiring from afar as Gary and I talk.

George: But today I am wearing a Castangia coat. It was customized for me. Of course, it’s breast cancer awareness month, so I’m wearing pink. Of course, I’m wearing Pantalon Torino trousers. Along with it, I have a pair of Santoni shoes on and kind of a little bit of all of the brands, so today was one of those days I needed to go ahead and pay homage to Castangia and get everybody else in the store in here so they can get some of it too.

Aislyn: And a fantastic tie.

George: Oh yes. This is one thing my girlfriend picked out for me. I let her.

Aislyn: I love it. It seems like she picked out a good one.

George: Yeah, well that’s the one thing I let her do.

Aislyn: How would you describe—are you from Charleston?

George: Born and raised.

Aislyn: And how would you describe your personal style?

George: My hashtag is a Charlesmpolitan Gent, so I’m very cosmopolitan, but I’m here in Charleston, so instead of the whole metropolitan field in big cities, we bring it right here in Charleston and make sure it’s taken care of. Right here at M. Dumas & Sons, 294 King Street, Charleston, South Carolina.

Aislyn: As I leave M. Dumas & Sons, I stand back to take a photo of the vintage sign that hangs out front, and I marvel at the historic buildings around it.

It’s a sea of brick and stucco, and none of them look like they’re really over three stories tall, and I wonder why. Fortunately, my next stop just happens to be the organization that made this King Street historic preservation possible. That’s after the break.

Aislyn: On our way to the Preservation Society Shop. Beautiful morning walking on King Street and oh, passing Croghan’s, where I’ll be later. It’s a beautiful jewelry shop. Good morning. How are you? How are you? Good. How are you? Good.

The Preservation Society of Charleston has its headquarters and a retail shop on the corner of King and Queen Street. After climbing a steep staircase and passing signs for the society’s fall tours, I find CEO Brian Turner in a sunlit room that faces King Street.

Brian Turner: We’re the first grassroots preservation organization in America, founded in 1920. We celebrated our hundredth anniversary a couple years ago and we get involved in critical land use issues facing Charleston.

It’s a very popular destination, but that of course brings along a lot of people who wanna sort of profit from the amazing environment that we’ve created, as well as the fact of livability in the city. And so we advocate before boards and commissions for responsible and sustainable land use policies.

Aislyn: Charleston was the first city in the United States to regulate its historic district way back in 1931. And that was in large part due to the efforts of Susan Pringle Frost, a women’s rights activist, and a real estate agent who founded the Preservation Society. Today the organization has a variety of initiatives to protect against overdevelopment, climate change and overtourism.

Brian Turner: Things that threaten to really water down the experience that people get when they come here.

Aislyn: And those initiatives are quite fascinating and travel friendly.

Brian Turner: The type of traveler that I think is right for Charleston is somebody who wants to see sort of the behind the scenes and understand the real history. So right now we actually just started our annual fall tours program where we’re doing education around different themes, and we intentionally keep these tours small and curated to minimize impacts on our historic district, but really have an education forward approach to tell the stories behind the buildings.

Aislyn: The Preservation Society also has two other signature events.

Brian Turner: We also do a Carolopolis awards in February, which celebrate the rehabilitation culture in Charleston. Really, as you walk around, you’ll see little plaques—we’ve been doing that for over 70 years and awarding the best preservation projects these plaques. And we have a preservation month, which is every May where we do things like hard hat tours and lectures and events that engage people in our work and some of the advocacy that we’re doing around different topics.

Aislyn: And of course, they have their fabulous retail shop, which became what it is today, starting about eight years ago.

Brian Turner: Until then, we were just a small, kind of what you might expect from a historic preservation organization, like a little orientation some, some tchotchkes, but we have really made a pivot to making our retail shop a core part of our identity and our mission by introducing people on the street to what it means to be a local maker in Charleston.

Aislyn: So of course, I owe it to myself and to you to spend some time browsing the shop. And by the way, I found out that anyone can join the Preservation Society, and if you do, you get 10 percent off any purchases, just FYI.

Johnathan Free: I’m Johnathan Free, and I’m the retail manager here at the Preservation Society Shop.

Aislyn: And what are we standing in right now?

Jonathan: So you are standing in the front room, which is where we house most of our locally made products.

Aislyn: OKAnd I would love to hear about some of these makers. Do you wanna walk around? We can do a show and tell?

Jonathan: Certainly.

Aislyn: We start with one of Charleston’s most iconic makers.

Jonathan: So one of my personal favorites and a very popular local brand from Charleston is Brackish. They make a lot of feather wearable items. They started with Brackish bow ties, which you can see right here behind you.

Aislyn: Aislyn side note: You may have actually seen a Brackish bow tie out in the wild and not realized it. Because they’re very popular with celebrities. Like everyone from Bill Murray, who has a home in Charleston, to Blake Lively and Lena Waithe has sported one, but I digress. So back to Jonathan, who’s speaking to the Brackish evolution.

Jonathan: And then it’s kind of morphed into if they can make it and you wear it, they’ll do it. Um, the cuffs are very popular. I have on one today myself.

Aislyn: Oh, wow. And they, they’re all feathers.

Jonathan: They’re, so, most of the bases are brass with gold and then the feathers overlay, sometimes they’ll move into a stingray leather. Or a lionfish leather. They’re all malleable and they all have a lifetime warranty on ’em. So if you ever mess up and hop in the shower with it, they’ll fix it for you.

Aislyn: They’re beautiful. So where do they gather the materials for this?

Jonathan: So all of the feathers are sustainably sourced. They work with farmers who collect the feathers that would otherwise be thrown away, and Brackish buys them and turns them into something beautiful you can wear.

Aislyn: We’re looking at a Brackish bow tie that features the eyes of two peacock feathers.

Jonathan: The most popular is probably going to be the peacock feather. Most of our sales in the cuffs comes from the peacock feather, but also they make things for us exclusively. So this front drawer you see here is a cuff that they make exclusively for us. It’s called the Centennial. They made it for our 100-year celebration as an organization in 2020. We also have Susan, Pringle, and Frost named after our founder, Susan Pringle Frost.

You have the, the pheasant, then that’s the Guinea, which is very well known around Charleston, as you’ve seen them walking around south abroad. And then you also have the peacock, which is the blue feather there.

Aislyn: Jonathan also introduces me to Burls and Steel knives, which are forged using an anvil and hammer, a very old-school technique. And the handles have an equally cool story.

Jonathan: The handles are mostly made from burl wood and he—

Aislyn: What’s burlwood?

Jonathan: Burlwood is the curly knot on a tree that whenever you cut it, it makes this. A lot of them are dyed so you can see a pop of color coming from them.

Aislyn: He also introduces me to Smithey cookware.

Jonathan: So Smithey is made up in the Old Navy shipyard. So whenever the Navy left North Charleston and the Park Circle area, they left a lot of abandoned buildings and when Smithey came about, they decided to make their products in that Old Navy shipyard.

Aislyn: Smithey is pretty new. They started in 2015, but their style is also old-school.

Jonathan: So these pans are pretty close to what you would’ve seen about 135 years ago. The craftsmanship is very similar to that.They’re all polished on the inside as you see that nice, beautiful, soft finish.

Aislyn: It’s kind of brown, it’s like brown in color.

Jonathan: Yeah, so they’re pre-seasoned for you, so you have a nice layer of seasoning to get started for you.

Aislyn: They have Dutch ovens and skillets and big pots, all with these gleaming bronzy interiors.

This looks like a pot that you hand down the generations to your children.

Jonathan: It certainly is an heirloom piece. And then they also have a carbon steel collection, which is handmade by their blacksmiths all the way down to the screws and handles are each uniquely made and you can still see the hammer marks in a lot of them.

Aislyn: As the tour wraps up, I’m contemplating how much room I have in my suitcase for some of the other items for sale, including a very special basket.

I also see what I believe are sweetgrass baskets.

Jonathan: That’s correct. We have a family of three that make all of our sweetgrass baskets for us. It is NJH Sweetgrass Baskets, and it’s a mother, father, and son collab.

Aislyn: Oh, cool.

Jonathan: And so they will all sign the bottoms of ’em, so you’ll know if it’s the mom, the father, or the son that creates ’em for us. We’re starting to get into some seasonal things, so we have some wreaths.

Aislyn: Oh, neat.

Jonathan: And we also have some little ornaments you could put on your tree.

Aislyn: Can you just very briefly tell me kind of what the history of sweetgrass baskets is here?

Jonathan: So the sweetgrass baskets are an—it is really an art. You know, it’s something that is handed down through generations. You can even kind of see techniques and that’s been passed down generationally from different families. It’s really a quintessential piece of art of Charleston.

Aislyn: And yes, there are plenty of food stuffs like…

Jonathan: Marsh Hen Mill, which grows out on Edisto Island is my favorite product. They make grits and grains. We carry a few different types of their grits here at the bottom, but they’re also really well known for their Carolina Gold rice, which you probably had at a few restaurants around town. Yep. And then currently we have our Heritage Shortbread, which is a fan favorite seasonally here.

Aislyn: Wow. Who makes the Heritage Shortbread?

Jonathan: It’s made down on Hilton Head Island. It’s an old family recipe. Um, I’ll give you a sample before you go.

Aislyn: Hey. Alright, I’ll take it. And fruitcake. I see also fruitcake, the season’s coming.

And an entire book section where I find my favorite kind of souvenir…

Aislyn: …postcards.

Jonathan: These are all vintage from Elizabeth O’Neill Verner’s estate. She was one of our founding members, and she is a very prominent South Carolina artist from Charleston. So she actually had these postcards printed in the 1940s and her estate passed them to us. So these are real vintage, 80-year-old postcards.

Aislyn: Really? And can—you can do people mail them?

Jonathan: Mm-hmm. Sure do. If you want. My friend actually used them for her wedding invitations.

Aislyn: Oh, what a cool idea.

I buy and send four of these postcards on my way to my final stop: the jewel of Charleston, quite literally.

Rhett Ramsay Outten: My grandfather learned how to hand engrave in Philadelphia at the hand-engraving school before World War I. He apprenticed with a few people here and then opened his own shop in 1907 and he was a bench jeweler and hand engraver.

Aislyn: Oh, and that was here in Charleston?

Rhett: That was in Charleston on King Street.

Aislyn: This is Rhett, or rather…

Rhett: Rhett Ramsay Outten. I’m one of the owners of Croghan’s Jewel Box with my sister Mariana Hay.

Aislyn: Rhett and Mariana are the third generation in this family jewelry business, which has been a fixture in Charleston for nearly 120 years.

Rhett: My grandfather was William Joseph Croghan, but we called him Peppa.

Aislyn: Rhett tells me her grandfather loved his work, though he had a good work life balance too, closing up shop to go home for lunch every day.

Rhett: He’d look up and whoever was in the store, they’d walk a few blocks home and they’d go to my grandmother’s for lunch and they’d sit. And some days he’d come back some days, apparently he didn’t. But he was never in a rush. You know, just, I, I like to think of him as a, as a craftsman.

Aislyn: The original Croghan’s was a tiny slip of a thing.

Rhett: Most dwellings have a side porch. This was a 1790s building and it had a side porch, and then you’d enter into the home from the side porch into a living room, a foyer living room in a dining room. It was kind of a double house, but you just entered from a single porch. Our first store actually occupied only the single porch. It was built in 1797 and a building was built up next to it, but it, it was an originally a side porch, gosh, I would say 200 square feet max. Tiny, tiny little store.

Aislyn: Rhett and Marianna’s mom, Mary, wanted to be a writer. She even penned a gossip column called “Ask Jackie” at her school newspaper. But the summer after graduation, Mary’s father—Rhett’s grandfather—asked her to work in the store for a few months

Rhett: And she never left. She kind of turned the store into more of a front of house situation. She loved to buy from those traveling salesman and she loved to sell to all her friends. Before it was kind of just a shop where you could buy things that could be engraved or my grandfather would make your diamond ring with a band, but it wasn’t a vast inventory, you know, and she really kind of considered it her folly.

Aislyn: But that folly turned into something much bigger. Mary decided she wanted to build a legacy business for her four children: Rhett and Mariana have two brothers, including George, who has Downs Syndrome.

Rhett: I found an article recently and she said, “You know, it was always my folly. And then I had this really special, wonderful son and I thought he might need a place to go, like I have to make this a business, like a real viable business that can survive without me in case he needs a job one day.”

And that was sort of jumping off point to really get interested in the business of jewelry, um, not just the folly of it. I like to use that word. She hired a few friends and it’s really grown in an amazing way, in a pretty short time in one generation.

Aislyn: In contrast to her mother, Rhett has always known she wanted to be in the jewelry business.

Do you remember your first significant piece of jewelry?

Rhett: I don’t remember a time where I didn’t have on a ring: baby rings and baby bracelets. I mean, we just grew up wearing it all the time. But the other thing about being in the family jewelry business is everything is for sale.

One of my very favorite stories is getting a signet ring for my thirt—it might have been my 15th birthday. We had our family crest on it. I was named after my grandmother, and her name was O’Hagan, very Irish name, so my name was Ohlorhetta O’Hagan. So I got the O’Hagan Crest on a sign ring. It was a little bit, you know, big for me, but I loved it.

And I got the call one day and mom said, “Rhett, meet me on the front steps. I’m driving by and I’m, I’m gonna need your ring.” I said, “OK, OK!” You know, dutifully ran down the steps, met her in the driveway, handed her the ring that night at supper, she said, “I sold that ring to the most lovely man from—” and I was like, “You sold my ring, like, I don’t mind that you sold my ring, but it had the O’Hagan crest on it.” She said, “Well, he was from Ohio and he just loved the way it looked, so we didn’t really talk about that.” She said—but this was the best line, always—”I’m gonna get you something better.”

Aislyn: Rhett now wears her mother’s ring, which she says she would never sell, and I can see why it’s an oval sapphire surrounded by antique diamonds all set in yellow gold.

Rhett: It’s English and it’s an antique, and it is, um, easy to wear and flat on the hand and reminds me of my mom every time I look at it.

Aislyn: And now she and Mariana run the business with the next generation: Mariana’s three kids.

Rhett: The most exciting thing is the next generation. So my sister and I are third generation, and then her three children work in the business, um, which is just the best. It makes it really fun to come to work.

Aislyn: And they’ve made huge changes since that tiny King Street store. In June 2025, they opened the doors on their new flagship store, a 6,000-square-foot, two-story building with ample space for their many employees, including their jewelers who we’re gonna meet next.

Rhett and I were talking in her office, but then we move into this bright white jeweler space, which to me looks much more like a science lab, and I am instantly obsessed. First, we meet the man who’s incorporated some fascinating technology into his work.

Rhett: Jeff, who is here, he’s making one of our famous Croghan’s three across low and tight flush diamond rings, and we’ve been selling some iteration of this ring forever.

Jeff: Uh, always start with the diamonds first, or whatever stones you’re using. Put them where you want ’em, and then build the ring around it,

Aislyn: And then you print it out?

Jeff: Right. I have a 3D printer, so if a customer wants to see it and wear it, I, I actually print the model. I’ll set the stones in the model, they can try it on, and then I send the model off and have it cast.

Rhett: But it gives you the idea of exactly what it’s gonna look like on your fingers. A scale instead of that. Like so instead of seeing a picture, yes, you actually can hold it and feel it and touch it and know how it fit.

Aislyn: Jeff shows me how he designs rings on his computer, a process that boggles my mind.

Jeff: But this program is ZBrush and it’s not your typical CAD program. ’cause I can just take things and move stuff.

Aislyn: Wow. He just, um, made a diamond look really wild and crazy.

Jeff: Oh yeah. I can just pull things however I want ’em.

Aislyn: You’re adding prongs.

Jeff: No, I was just pulling stuff. Yeah. But, uh, you know, it is, it is complete freedom.

Rhett: But you see the beauty of having it go from that which is, you know, just an image to actually what the ring is gonna feel like on your finger. Once you’ve started casting in platinum or gold, you have so much invested in that piece. It’s very hard to alter it. Absolutely.

Joe: But so the technology is, I mean, technology is important. Desktop technology where I can take a digital model and make it physical reality.

Rhett: It’s bonkers in a 120 year old jewelry store.

Aislyn: And then we move to a more analog jeweler.

Rhett: You know, Nicholas, he does the opposite of what Jack does.

Aislyn: Hello. I’m Aislyn. Nice to meet you.

Nicholas: Nice to meet you. So Jeff does everything on the computer. I do everything by hand. So like this is a ring that I recently made for maybe one of Rhett’s customers. So everything started out like this with just pieces of metal. So we’ve got wire, we’ve got sheet metal, we’ve got a ring blank that is just the right size for the ring. Um, and then I’ve got my diamonds.

And so then I will outline the stones. I cut, I cut out what’s called the gallery of the ring, which is like the, the bands around the ring, around the stones. You’ll see those a lot. And then, uh, I’ll assemble all of that and solder it all together. Build the prongs outta the wire. Um, and then I set the stones. And so that’s what that would look like in the end there. And so that would be like these pieces here, these are some of, some of our, that’s how

Aislyn: It’s so much smaller. I mean, it’s the, it’s the size of like a, your finger pad.

Jonathan: Yeah. Just, I mean, if, if you think about it—

Rhett: It’s smaller than a postage stamp.

Jonathan: Exactly. All the materials would fit on a postage stamp most of the time.

Aislyn: Now it’s time to go down and see these works in person, in this shiny new Croghan’s showroom where Rhett seems to know everybody. At Croghan’s, they make most of their own jewelry.

Rhett: We carry very few designers. We love to collect kind of our own assortment of things. And so we love estate jewelry. We love to make things upstairs, as you can see, we love to kind of make things that only we have, so we kind of lean in the designer world cautiously, you know.

Aislyn: One of the designers they carry is Temple St Clair.

Rhett: And her mom actually lived in Charleston for a while and one of her first trunk shows was here in Charleston. One of her signatures is this big crystal amulet. It’s rock crystal, and she does all kinds of different ones. And during COVID, we said to her one day, I said to her one day, “You know, we’ve got about 25 employees” and I mean, everybody was so scared during COVID. We thought the world would shut down and nobody would ever buy another piece of jewelry again.

I said, “What do you have in your”—my sister and I were chatting about what we could do for our employees and I said, “What do you have in your inventory that you could make for our employees as a gift for Christmas?” .

Aislyn: Temple made a beautiful amulet with sapphires that are Croghan’s signature blue.

Rhett: And so that got us thinking, “Wow, if you could make that custom just for us, could you create an amulet that was only for us, that we would only sell that typifies Charleston?”

Oh, she called the next day. She said, “I’ve already designed them. I’m so excited about it.” And she created a pineapple gate where one of our famous houses has this pineapple on top of its gate, and she created that amulet to remind you of that, this is Rainbow Row with all the stones hand cut in the shape of the houses. And then this is after the Sword Gate house, which has a lot of beautiful iron work that you see all over Charleston…

Aislyn: Some of Croghan’s most beloved items also honor the city around them.

Rhett: And then this Charleston Skyline bracelet’s a fun thing. That’s the Charleston—

Aislyn: It looks like because we’re seeing the churches and rooftops.

Rhett: And then these pieces over here are inspired from the moulding around the choir loft in our church and my grandmother sang at St. Mary’s Church in the choir. And so we call this the Mary Chain.

Aislyn: Rhett shows me one of the many things they can engrave.

Rhett: We call this our cypher ring. And um, my niece is very, very, very creative and created this font with just two letters kind of after like Thomas Jefferson Cipher, kind of like back in the day it was like two initials, two letters kind of overlapping.

Aislyn: It’s very beautiful. Like is there an era that you think that this reflects?

Rhett: I think it’s like the best of the old and new, you know? But anyway, this is a family ring. I can send you a picture of it engraved, but we take each of these squares and we put the initials of a member of your family.

There’s a specific font engraving style that we used for that as well. Eight spots. I mean, we have everything from people who’ve done their bridesmaids, people who’ve done their siblings, moms who’ve done all their grandchildren and children.

Aislyn: And this reminds me of something that Rhett had shared when we were up in her office.

Rhett: You know, the engraver is kind of the keeper of history. Like when you think of all the things that get engraved, I mean, wedding bands and chalices, when you become a priest and confirmation medals and just the mundane things become really important to families because it’s, it’s like a stamp date of time.

We don’t have a lot of his pieces or a lot of hand engraved things that he did, but the rest of Charleston does. So that’s exciting.

Aislyn: The things that he has touched in the city that still exist out there.

Rhett: It’s amazing. They’re still circulating.

Aislyn: It so perfectly sums up how my time with these artisans has felt like: Fresh ideas and energy are still circulating in businesses that are collectively hundreds of years old. It’s inspiring and personally quite creatively fulfilling, and to be honest, filled up my suitcase bit. So the next time you’re in Charleston, or maybe as the holiday season kicks into high gear, spend a little time exploring and maybe even supporting these small local businesses.

We’ve included all the relevant links in the show notes. Join us next week for the last episode in this special Unpacked miniseries where we dig into Charleston’s rich music and culture scene. We’ll see you then.