30 Years at the Jeweller’s Bench: What Life and Craft Have Taught Jana Salabová

The early 1990s must have been a turbulent time for the industry. How do you remember those years?

‘At nineteen, under the communist regime, I refused to work on a factory production line and chose to study at a teacher training college instead. The early days of the business were not about having a gleaming boutique. My first workshop occupied a single room in our village home, and customers from nearby Ústí nad Orlicí would walk four kilometres to see me. I simply had an overwhelming desire to create.

To buy our first machines, we had to mortgage two houses. My parents were too terrified to sleep, but I was as stubborn as a mule and kept pushing ahead. Not for a moment did I doubt that it would work out.’

Is there a particularly memorable experience from the early days of your business?

‘When we wanted to build a workshop with a shop, the banks refused us a loan on security grounds. I even travelled to the bank’s head office in Prague with the local branch manager to plead our case. It was no use. Then an entirely ordinary customer, whose jewellery I happened to be repairing, arranged a six-year loan for me within a few days. He worked for a savings bank.

It is fascinating to see that when you do things properly and honestly, help can come from the most unexpected places.’

What was your vision when you founded the jewellery business?

‘I wanted to create my own original collections and designs to keep ready in a drawer. Over time, however, I realised that I was not doing that at all. Creating pieces purely according to my own ideas was a luxury at the time; first and foremost, I had to earn a living. So I began making jewellery strictly according to my customers’ wishes.

Looking back, I can see that the need to listen to our customers ultimately became our greatest added value.’

Jewellery-making technology must have advanced enormously over the past 30 years. What was the greatest turning point for you?

‘It came at a trade fair in Munich, when I realised that 3D modelling was the secret behind the precision of jewellery made abroad. It was actually a matter of chance. Under normal circumstances, I would never have had time to learn how to use 3D software, but I happened to injure my leg and had to stay in bed. Then I received an email offering a one-week trial version. I persevered, even though I was fifty and my husband initially had no faith at all in an investment of one hundred thousand Czech crowns.

Learning software like that is like taking up the violin at fifty. Photoshop is child’s play by comparison. But our renders later even confused professional photographers at trade fairs, as they could not understand how they achieved such extraordinary sharpness.’

Has the way Czech people view materials and precious stones changed as well?

‘Enormously. Platinum was practically unavailable under communism; the regime apparently regarded it as a relic of the bourgeoisie. Customers have told me that people would queue for the few rings available, just as they did for books. When I got married in 1986, my engagement ring with an ordinary cubic zirconia cost more than my husband’s entire monthly salary.

Today, an average salary can buy you a ring with a natural diamond. The market is also filling up with laboratory-grown diamonds. They are perfectly suitable for everyday wear, but because their production is so extremely energy-intensive, I remain an advocate of natural diamonds.’

SALABA is now known as a thriving family-run business. How does working together as a family operate in practice?

‘When you work with your husband 24 hours a day, it is a baptism of fire. At times, being able to escape and teach at an art school saved my sanity.

There was also a period when I spent my evenings struggling to add new products to the online shop, while my husband complained that I was wasting my time sitting at the computer and that we were only pouring money into the business anyway.

It was not easy for him either. He had trained as a mechanical engineer, had a good job and a secure livelihood. Yet he decided to give all of that up. He also invested part of his life, his security and his own plans in the family business.

To be honest, I was on the verge of complete frustration and ready to give up. That was precisely when our daughter Klára stepped in. She took charge of the online shop and social media and effectively saved the brand.’