Getting that display ‘just right‘ is not as easy as it sounds. Whether it’s the clashing colours of your bright necklaces, or the ocean of sterling silver casting a bit of a dampener on your tiny collection of cubic zirconia rings, it’s difficult to present your stock at its best without hours of work.

And it’s even more difficult when you have to do it every morning, only to pack it all away again at the end of the day. For many of us, the retail side of the business is not a cosy little high street shop or a corner of a fashionable shopping centre, and we don’t all have the luxury of hiring a 17 year and paying them a minimum wage to pack and unpack for us.

Back in our retail days - not that long ago - we made setting up our stock in as presentable a manner as possible into a fine art. And one of the most important tools in our arsenal was the humble paint brush.

Now, it’s true that you could spend cart loads of money buying professional equipment to polish your rings and pendants to gleaming perfection, but we learned early on that a basic paint brush purchased from B&Q would do the job just fine. Tiffany’s may disagree, but then their prices are just a little higher than ours, so I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It was our Sterling Silver necklaces that caused most of the problems. All that packing and unpacking, not to mention the strange locations we found ourselves setting up in over the years, made the dust and dirt pile up. Take the heart shaped pendant pictured below for example.

Sterling silver necklaces of this type were amongst our top sellers for some time. Every morning we’d be faced with the daunting task of unpacking, opening, and setting up a few hundred of these, and every morning we had to de-dust them before the public descended upon us. The paint brush is the perfect tool for this. A couple of quick swipes with a two inch brush and they’re ready to face the world.

It’s worth remembering that many of the professional tools used by jewelers for centuries are merely variations of existing tools used in everyday life, and like an artist who is just starting out, you don’t need to be spending vast amounts of money on expensive brushes and canvases when the cheaper varieties will get the job done just fine.