Behind the scenes at one of Ireland’s oldest jewellery stores Weir & Sons: workshops, rare jewels and €100,000 watches

I’m here in Weir’s for a day, being dazzled by the cases of glittering diamonds; the gleam of vintage Irish silver in Edwardian wooden cabinets; and marvelling at how the cost of a watch can span from a €30 Casio to upwards of €100,000 and beyond for a Patek Philippe. Andrews himself is wearing an Omega Speedmaster today. (He has more than one watch, in case you were wondering what the managing director of a jewellery business wears on his wrist.) The building is large, with several floors, and wraps around the corner of Grafton Street and Wicklow Street. Even so, it’s a surprise to learn than 120 people work on or near the premises. A further 80 work between Weir’s five other premises, one of which is in England. The others are in Dundrum Town Centre , a Longines shop on Wicklow Street, and locations on Drury Street and O’Connell Street . Clearly the Weir’s brand is doing well, and there is high customer demand for what they sell. But as I learn during the day, what’s sold also needs to be maintained. There are a number of workshops that support the aftercare, maintenance and repair of items sold at the shop, many pieces costing multiples of what my secondhand VW Polo car cost me. There is also a workshop dedicated solely to engraving. Not far away from the shop floor is a workshop devoted entirely to the servicing and mending of Rolex watches, staffed full time by five people. Should you have a Rolex – which, it seems, many people in Dublin do – it will take four to six weeks for a service, longer if it needs mending. “We have our own library of parts here. We order in bulk,” says watch workshop manager Brian O’Connell, pulling out a series of shallow drawers, each containing various tiny parts. O’Connell has worked at Weir’s for 48 years. He started as a messenger boy and worked his way up, learning his apprenticeship from other colleagues. His service spans almost a third of the entire duration of Weir’s existence. Lorraine Waters, who comes from “a watchmaking family”, has just achieved Rolex Level 50 accreditation at a course in London. What this means in layman’s language is that Waters can probably fix just about anything that has gone wrong with any Rolex. On her workbench are some of the parts of a watch she is mending. There are half a dozen tiny screws that look no larger than the head of a pin. Other parts are in clear plastic boxes. “A basic Rolex will have between 100 to 120 parts,” she explains. “More complicated movements have up to 200 parts.” At a time when AI is being much discussed, there is something entirely refreshing about witnessing a human being doing work only a human brain and hands can do. To spend time in the workshop is to understand a little of the meticulous skill these craftspeople possess. There are also various machines that test the mechanism and durability of the watches. There’s a machine that simulates water pressure; another that has several watches on it, dipping and spinning to test movement; and yet another where the steel bracelets are polished. A basic service is between €700 and €1,200. More complicated repairs can cost much more. Apart from regular servicing, the most common reason Rolexes end up in this workshop is entirely mundane. “People dropping their watches, or accidentally hitting them against something,” O’Connell explains. He shows me a watch in for repair, where the glass face is cracked and the delicate dial and hands were also damaged in the impact. That will be an expensive accident. There is another workshop nearby, which is empty as we pass it. A sign at the entrance states sternly: “This is a Rolex workshop. The job being performed requires high levels of concentration. Please do not disturb unnecessarily.” At another location there is a busy office, with clear plastic bags stacked on each desk. In one corner, there is a dumb waiter of the kind used in kitchens to transport food to a diningroom. It’s not food that is being transported in this dumb waiter; it’s the jewellery and watches and other items people bring in for repair. They’re taken in on a different floor where the public bring them, and then sent immediately via the dumb waiter to a secure place, so that nothing valuable remains lying about. Susie McGivney is the senior customer service and workshop manager. “There are all sorts of reasons why people bring in items,” she explains. By “items”, she means mostly jewellery and watches. “People want to get them valued for insurance purposes, or they are part of a probate process, or rings need resizing, or jewellery needs mending.” McGivney shows me a diamond bracelet where the clasp needs repairing. Then she shows me a diamond cluster ring where a claw is damaged, and a stone has subsequently fallen out, unnoticed by the owner until – alas – too late. The missing diamond was never found. Now the ring needs both a replacement diamond and the claw mended. “People don’t realise you should get your rings serviced,” she says. “A ring might look like it’s in good condition, but you need to maintain the claws. If you leave it too late to get checked out, this is what happens.” She indicates the place where a large diamond used to be. This office is a kind of jewellery triage centre, where pieces get assessed and then allocated to the particular workshop they need to be mended. They receive, on average, at least 1,500 pieces a month to be mended, with repairs usually taking weeks. Valuable items obviously are not sent in the regular post. For customers who don’t pick up their repaired items in person, there are dedicated van deliveries. Adam Jackson, who works on the shop floor, has been with Weir’s for 10 years. He also comes from a jewellery background; his parents had two jewellery shops. “I have long-standing jewellery customers here,” he says, standing over trays of engagement rings. “These rings range from €1,600 to the-sky’s-the-limit. People might come in with a budget, but they often leave with something way above the budget. It’s about loving the piece.” According to Jackson, the most enduring popular choice of engagement ring is a solitaire, in classic yellow gold. “Timeless and elegant.” At the jewellery workshop, goldsmith Stefano Giacomel is replacing the backs on a pair of diamond earrings. Each of the art deco-style earrings could pass for brooches. They manage to be both utterly spectacular and supremely elegant, which, given their size, is astonishing. Put it this way, Elizabeth Taylor herself would have been happy to dangle them from her ears. In all, Giacomel says, they are composed of 12 carats of emerald-cut diamonds. Goldsmith Stefano Giacomel at work in the jewellery workshop of Weir & Sons. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Stefano Giacomel makes bespoke pieces as well as repairing items at Weir & Sons. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien In this jewellery workshop, Giacomel and his colleague Alessio Rufi also make bespoke pieces and contribute to Weir’s own developing line of jewellery, called Generations. Technology advances now mean that, along with the bespoke pieces, customers also receive a video of the goldsmith working on the piece, as well as the design sketches. Giacomel puts one of the earrings on to the bench and shows me how it can be magnified on a nearby screen to many multiples of its actual size. It’s like looking at a galaxy. One stone awaiting a customer is an eight carat yellow natural fancy diamond. Giacomel unwraps it to show me, and the refracted colour shimmers and glows; an entrancing pale moon, waxing and waning on the palm of his hand. “It is of another world,” he says simply. Their most expensive piece of jewellery now on sale is an emerald and diamond collar at €612,000. The day I visit, a section of the shop is blocked off; a stairwell is being built, which will lead to a new configuration of showrooms upstairs. There is a Rolex showroom, a Patek Philippe showroom, and another set up with desks and armchairs where couples can examine potential engagement rings. This space also has a bar cart, coffee machines and glass containers of red-wrapped Swiss Lindt chocolates – a choice which presumably complements the Swiss-made watches. In another room, I spot cases of Champagne under lock and key; all destined for customers on the brink of making high-value purchases. There is also a striking square object in one corner. It looks like a cross between a vintage stacked hi-fi system from the 1990s, and a multi-dial clock display. Chris Andrews is delighted that I have noticed it. Being from a family who have a long association with timepieces of all kinds, he couldn’t resist buying this piece of timekeeping media history. What I’m looking at is one of the so-called “Master Clocks” that the BBC used in the past to tell the time at different cities for their World Service transmission. This was bought at auction when BBC Broadcasting House on Portland Place underwent renovations. If you ever listened to the BBC World Service back in the analogue day, this Master Clock informed presenters what time it was, wherever in the world you were listening to the broadcast from. There was a time when the disappearance of watches was predicted, particularly when it became commonplace for pretty much every adult to own a mobile phone. But clearly watches are still coveted, still bought and still worn. It’s obvious that owning a watch, particularly one that costs north of €100,000, is about a lot more than merely telling the time. Later, Lucinda Andrews, marketing director and Chris’s sister, explains that many watches in the Rolex and Patek Philippe showrooms have customer waiting lists. I had naively thought that if you had enough money to buy one of these watches, you could get what you wanted, no problem. It’s not the case. “Everyone wants a Daytona Rolex,” Lucinda says. “But we only get allocated so many of those a year. We get allocated a range from Rolex, and Patek Philippe. And we have to know our customers. We don’t want people buying watches to sell them on. Because they are hard to get, they can cost more on the resale market. The watch companies don’t like that.” I ask her what, if anything, is the difference between a customer who buys a Rolex watch and one who buys a Patek Philippe. “Price point is one. The Patek is more expensive. But it’s about more than price. If you are into watches, your first watch might be a Rolex, and then you move on.” Over the generations and decades, like any other commercial business, Weir’s has seen a lot of trends come and go. “I’m long enough in this business that we see trends coming around again,” says Chris. “In jewellery, the colours of gold change a lot; yellow gold is on trend at the moment. Prior to that, white was a lot more prominent, and rose gold was also a strong trend.” Celebrities, of course, can influence trends. “Around the time Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton , there was a trend for sapphires,” Chris says, talking about Princess Diana’s diamond and sapphire engagement ring, which her famous son gave to the daughter-in-law she never met. As he notes, “It’s the second time that ring created a trend.” Weir’s carries a selection of vintage watches and jewellery, in addition to antique silver. “People appreciate vintage and antique pieces a lot more now,” he says. “If you look after a watch, they can outlast us. A lot of people like wearing vintage pieces. They were made in lower quantities. Silver items are also coming around again. We would love to start a silver workshop. There used to be a lot of them around Dublin, but now most of them have slowly disappeared.” A lot of silver comes through the workshop of David Mulreany, who is a goldsmith and engraver. If you have ever wondered where the cups won at events such as Dublin Horse Show or racing meets go to be engraved, it’s here. There’s one in the workshop when I visit: the Foxford Cup, which dates back to 1950. The latest winner of this racing cup has just had his name and that of the horse engraved on to it: owner Dan Kiely and his horse Dark Viper. (Jockeys, who arguably do the essential work of winning a race, don’t get their names engraved.) Mulreany also recently engraved the names of two naval ships on to their ship bells, the LÉ Gobnait, and the LÉ Aoibhinn. At present, he is making a new cast for a medal for Trinity College’s Hist. The old cast has been in use for so long that its edges are beginning to blur. Some of the work Mulreany does is on a tiny scale, such as engraving the inside of rings. For my benefit, he demonstrates engraving a name on a pre-euro five pence coin; something he does “for fun”. I watch him at work, magnified on a screen overhead, and marvel at the steadiness of his hand; his precision, artistry and patience; and his ability to engrave something so perfectly, on the smallest of scales. I’m reminded suddenly of the monks of old, heads bent to their minute calligraphy. I notice that Mulreany is wearing something on his right wrist. He works for a business that deals in watches worth upwards of €100,000, where customers who can afford it can buy bespoke jewellery with stones worth in the tens of thousands. Up in the air, floors above all these valuable jewels, there is a master goldsmith at work, wearing a simple plaited leather bracelet on his right wrist.