When Paula Heath returned to Concord after 31 years as a fashion designer in New York, she called on an old high school teacher of hers for a job reference.
The interaction didn’t go as planned, but it certainly seems to have worked out.
Heath was interviewing for a position at the League of N.H. Craftsmen. When the league asked for a reference, she didn’t have to walk far to find one of its juried members, who happened to introduce her to jewelry-making when she was a student at Concord High School.
“I said I’ll be right back and I came over here (to Mark Knipe Goldsmiths) to ask if he’d give me a reference,” Heath recalled last week. “He said no, because, he says, ‘I’d like you to come work here.’ ”
She accepted the offer on the spot, never looking back, and spent nine years working under Knipe, eventually as the store manager. That run ended only when Knipe, 73, decided it was time for him to retire last year.
But starting tomorrow, a new era begins, when Heath will reopen the store on her own, calling it Goldsmiths Gallery, retaining one of the full-time goldsmiths and inviting Knipe to return whenever he pleases.
“There’ll always be a bench here for Mark,” she said.
Heath, who was born and raised in Concord as the daughter of a contractor, was always interested in artistic endeavors. It started with woodworking, she said, but she branched out with creative writing, pottery and jewelry-making classes in high school.
“You sign up for your class schedules – of course I put down jewelry making. Who wouldn’t?” she asked, adding, “It was the ’70s.”
Knipe, on the other hand, moved to the city for a job teaching at Concord High. It was only six years in that role before he left to become a professional jeweler, but for three of those years, Heath signed up for his classes.
“It was like having a master goldsmith you’re working with, taking classes with,” she said. “You get so intensely involved.”
When it came time to think about college, Heath put together a portfolio of dresses she designed and used that to gain entrance to the prestigious Parsons School of Design. Of the 102 students who started in her class, she was one of 22 who graduated, she said.
She said she was still in college when she was hired as an assistant to a designer that put her in front of now-famous Italian brands such as Versace and Armani.
“They came to New York the second year I was in school, and they put on their first fashion shows – no one had ever heard of them in the U.S.,” she said.
After 31 years in that career, she said she returned to Concord to care for her aging mother, who was a longtime fan of Knipe’s work.
Little did Heath know, at the time, that it would become her work, too.
“You never know how things are going to work out,” she said. “I still find it extremely exciting. I look forward to getting up every day and going to work, which is really a blast.”
Heath said she’s calling tomorrow the store’s “soft opening,” because the Knipes will be away. She’s scheduled a grand opening party for after they return, on March 15 from 4 to 7 p.m.
Concord was named the eighth-best state capital to live in last week by the financial advising website WalletHub.
And yet if you recall the city cracking the top five last year, your memory isn’t faulty. Based on the ranking of a different financial advising website, SmartAsset, Concord is also the reigning No. 4 best state capital.
New Hampshire generally floats to the top of these formula-driven rankings based on its low crime, low unemployment and high wages.
On the other hand, those high wages can be offset by a relatively high cost of living, and Concord struggled when SmartAsset started counting up the restaurants and things to do. Montpelier, Vt., apparently has twice Concord’s “dining and entertainment” per capita.
The new WalletHub rankings summarize a slew of subcategories into four headings: affordability (Concord was fifth), economic well-being (10th), quality of education and health (19th) and quality of life (25th).
It’s hard to gripe about a top 10 ranking, but how could Concord be so strong in affordability and so weak in quality of life?
On the Monitor’s website, we’ve uploaded the full data that WalletHub shared about how it came to its rankings.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)