Goldsmith Hugo Kohl has built his wholesale and retail business around hubs (or molds) that were used to make die-struck jewelry in Providence, RI, a jewelry manufacturing center from the 1790s until the 1940s, when casting began to take over the trade. Kohl has collected more than 7,000 hubs and also found and purchased antique and vintage equipment he needed to re-create jewelry from those hubs. In 2015, he opened a combination manufacturing and retail location in a revitalized icehouse in downtown Harrisonburg, VA. He designed a pathway through the workshop among the machinery and tools so visitors could watch. “It’s amazing the effect that has on certain people,” Kohl says. “It’s almost like you made it yourself. You want to own it.” Hugo Kohl is the winner of the 2020 America’s Coolest Stores Contest in the Small Cool division.
18 Photos That Prove How Cool Hugo Kohl Boutique and Factory Is
