If you’ve ever stopped into Kenyon Jewelers looking for your latest vintage find, you’ve probably had the opportunity to meet Doug Duffus or his daughter Bea. As Kenyon Jewelers celebrates its 100-year anniversary, we wanted to learn more about the people behind the counter and how they came to own such a well-known staple of the Wilkinsburg business district.
Here’s what we learned:
Doug Duffus doesn’t wear jewelry, he fixes it. Adornment, he says, has never suited him, but he’s been repairing rings and necklaces for nearly forty years, and the whole of his career has been behind the counter of Kenyon Jewelers in Wilkinsburg.
In 1987, when Doug was nineteen, attending Indiana University of Pennsylvania and studying to be an art teacher, he met Bob Shamey. Doug learned that Bob worked as a goldsmith.
“He was a great guy, very talented guy. He was in Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not because he’d carved the world’s smallest chain out of a toothpick. All of his stuff was just crazy. So I met him, and he showed me pieces he’d made for the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. When I returned to IUP after that summer, I enrolled in metal smithing classes and immediately took a liking to them. Making little things, moving and connecting pieces in unique ways – I just took to it.”
A few years later, Doug got a job at Kenyon Jewelers. Soon, he was commuting between Wilkinsburg, where he lived with his aunt; Indiana, where he was still attending IUP; and Johnstown, where he taught classes at the art center. While many of his friends with teaching degrees left the state seeking work, Doug was committed to doing work that he’d studied, and that brought him so much satisfaction.
As an employee of the Kenyons, Doug became attached to the store and to the borough of Wilkinsburg—meeting the neighbors, making relationships, joining the Chamber of Commerce, and eventually becoming one of the founding board members of the Wilkinsburg Chamber of Commerce.
More than 70 years after Leonard Kenyon Jr.’s father opened the store, which started out as a watch repair shop, Leonard decided it was time to retire. Doug and another employee, David Virostek, happily took over the jewelry store. “I wanted to be here,” says Doug. “I felt lucky to stay in this neck of the woods.”
Doug’s daughter Bea grew up in the store, taking naps in the upstairs apartment on days when she stayed home sick from school and coming into the store on her way to high school to earn a few dollars as a teen. Virostek, she recalled, had older children who were already out of the house, and he was glad to have the opportunity to play with Bea and her sister so Doug could get work done.
Today, much of the shop’s inventory is vintage art-deco rings priced affordably so that customers can fall in love with something and take it home without destroying their bank account. Many customers, Doug notes, are repeats. Some are people who grew up in Wilkinsburg and visit the shop to reminisce and buy something sentimental; others bring in old beloved jewelry, hoping to give it new life. Recently, a couple who bought their wedding bands from Kenyon Jewelers decades ago returned to purchase a new set of bands.
The continued celebration of family, community, and beautiful adornments – in many ways, things have remained unchanged at Kenyon Jewelers over the last 100 years. However, in other ways, the shop reflects the evolution and resilience of the Wilkinsburg community. Fashions have changed, the unique 1960s glass-and-pebbled-concrete storefront is receiving new life thanks to a facade grant from the WCDC, and the once rambunctious young girl running around the store now stands proudly as the store’s manager.
If you haven’t stopped by Kenyon Jewelers recently, we strongly encourage you to visit Doug and Bae—and make sure to tell them, “Cheers to 100 years”!
Written by Wilkinsburg resident Dade Lemanski.
My father, Eugene Reichenfeld, always bought jewelry for me from Leonard Kenyon. I still have many of those pieces and cherish them…especially the sweet rhinestone piano pin!
Great story.
My family shopped at Kenyon’s for many years. My brother Paul Jones became a jeweler and owned his own store in Wexford.