It was Wednesday night, July 21st of last year, during our annual NYC pilgrimage.
We’d just left Zinc Bar on West 3rd, where we got to know (part-time) bartender and photographer Jacob Murphy while the Alex Stein/Matt Brown Quintet played.
As we headed back westward and along West 4th toward the Christopher Street station, we came across the smallest shop in the Village at 184-3/4 West 4th: The Silversmith. We had to take a look.
Owner Ruth Kuzub didn’t warm up to us immediately, but she suffered us to ooh and aah at her jewelry, and by the next afternoon when we returned with cash to purchase the two rings we’d fallen in love with, this amber and Kevin’s turquoise Mr. Blue, she was definitely opening up to us a bit.
She told us that she’d been in the original Broadway cast of Fanny in 1954 (with Florence Henderson in the lead role), which was why she’d come to New York in the first place. She told us about working for The Silversmith since 1960 and eventually buying the store later that decade. She told us about living in the Village through the decades, the changes she’d witnessed.
And she told us about this amber ring.
Amber is petrified tree sap; this particular piece is from Poland. The dual tones of the stone, darker and lighter, are extremely unusual, and the whitish pieces inside the stone are seeds that were trapped in the sap as it hardened millions of years ago.
Millions. Whoa!
We left Ruth’s shop that day, the 22nd, and went over to Washington Square to hang out and play some music for an hour or so before heading uptown to Radio City to see Widespread Panic.
As usual in the City, it was a day to remember.
I took this picture with the Retro Camera for Android app by Urbian.
