Downtown jeweler closing shop after 54 years

Roberto Agnolini was 20 when Mark Bryan hired him as the house designer at Bryan & Scott Jewelers Limited. It was 1957 and Agnolini, from a town outside of Verona in northern Italy, was curious about the United States.

Now, 53 years later, Agnolini, 73, is preparing to close the shop at year’s end and dial back the demands of the jewelry business. An inventory reduction sale begins Friday at 112 N. Tejon St., Bryan & Scott’s home since 1961, and will continue through December. The building went up for sale a month ago for $1.85 million.

Agnolini, who took over the business after Bryan’s death in 1997, plans to keep the Bryan & Scott name and continue jewelry design, appraisal and interior design on a less demanding schedule than running the store requires.

“I don’t think I could ever retire completely,” he said.
There was no single reason for his decision, Agnolini said.

“Suddenly you wake up and you think, ‘That’s what I’m going to do,’” he said. “I’m in good health, but you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Many of Bryan & Scott’s eight employees plan to retire, too. Vivian Crump, Bryan & Scott’s bookkeeper, has the longest tenure after Agnolini at 28 years.

In those nearly three decades, she said, almost nothing has changed. Now as then, the store’s aisles are thick with art, china and furniture. Crump still keeps the books by hand.

“It’s really old-fashioned,” Crump said. “They say we’re not in the 21st century and I say, ‘No, we’re not. That’s the way we like it.’”

Bryan & Scott has served generations of customers — Bryan and his partner Gene Scott started the business in the mid-1940s. Crump said she’s seen babies carried in their mother’s arms, then return much later with children of their own.

“We have tried to keep up the traditions,” she said.

Downtown Colorado Springs has lost a number of its long-standing fixtures in recent years: Shewmaker’s Camera,  Michelle Chocolatiers & Ice Cream and The Chinook Bookshop. Ron Butlin, executive director of the Downtown Partnership, said some of that is part of the natural life cycle of a downtown.

“On the one hand, it’s obviously a bummer that they’re closing,” he said. “On the other hand, these independently owned businesses, at some point the owners have to retire.”

END OF AN ERA
Bryan & Scott Jewelers is closing its downtown store at 112 N. Tejon St. An inventory reduction sale will begin Friday and continue through December. Call 633-9316 for information.