SchmuckAtelier Zollikon

SchmuckAtelier Zollikon sits in the historic village center of Zollikon, a lakeside commune on the Goldküste (Gold Coast) between Zürich and Küsnacht, and the address has housed a working goldsmith's bench for 30 years. The atelier is run by a single goldsmith, Vistar Nir Zandany, who comes from a family of goldsmiths and carries the trade into the 6th generation. He worked alongside his mentor and predecessor, Dominik Schmuki, before taking over the workshop in 2012, and rather than rebrand or relocate he kept both the shop's name and its address on Buchholzstrasse 3, saying on the site that he continues it "in his mentor's spirit." For a couple trying to judge whether a small workshop is a going concern or a recent start-up borrowing someone else's reputation, that continuity is worth stating plainly: this is a handover of an established bench, not an unproven newcomer.

The core of the business is custom work: rings and other jewelry made to order in gold, silver, or platinum, designed around what the client wants rather than picked from a case. Zandany also sets unusual materials into precious metal, meteorite and ancient bog oak (Mooreiche) among them, so a design brief doesn't have to stay inside conventional stones and metals. Wedding and partner rings (Ehe- und Partnerringe) get their own section on the site, described as pieces meant to capture a couple's own story rather than follow a standard catalogue shape, which is exactly what a couple commissioning a ring here is looking for. Beyond new commissions, the workshop reworks and repairs: turning inherited jewelry into new favourite pieces, fixing damaged items, resizing rings, repolishing chipped stones, replacing stones in older settings, and restringing pearl necklaces. A small selection of finished jewelry from Zandany's own collection is also for sale in the shop, so a visitor can browse rather than commission if that suits them better.

What separates this workshop from most of the other addresses in this category is that Zandany cuts his own stones rather than buying them ready-cut. He describes gemstones and semi-precious stones as a lifelong passion running alongside the goldsmithing trade, and the workshop both sells stones and facets them to order, offering faceted cuts and cabochons, plus stone identification and stone-cutting courses on request. That means a ring can genuinely travel from rough stone to finished piece on a single bench, a combination few solo ateliers in Zürich handle entirely in-house. The workshop is also set up to serve other jewellers professionally: laser-welding repairs, and cutting or recutting stones, are listed among its services for fellow goldsmiths, a reasonable sign of how seriously other people in the trade rate the equipment and the skill behind it. Two more services round out the offer: buying old gold at the day's market rate, and professional jewelry appraisals for insurance or inheritance purposes.

Zandany's own account of his path folds the two crafts together: an early interest in stones alongside the family trade in goldsmithing, which is how he now builds pieces, in his own words, "from the raw stone to the finished jewel" in one place. The workshop is described as fully equipped for handwork, from an open flame through to a laser welder, plus the grinding machines needed for faceted stones and cabochons. For a bespoke commission that's a practical detail as much as a craft one: the fewer steps that get sent out to a different workshop, the more control one goldsmith has over both the finished piece and the schedule for getting there.

Booking and visiting

The atelier is open Tuesday to Friday from 09:30 to 17:30 and Saturday from 10:30 to 15:30, closed Mondays, and the site explicitly invites clients to arrange a personal appointment outside those hours if the regular schedule doesn't fit. That flexibility matters for a bespoke ring, where a first consultation, a design conversation, and eventually a fitting all take separate visits rather than one. Zollikon is genuinely easy to reach without a car: buses 912 and 916 run from Zürich Bellevue in about 8 minutes, so a couple based in the city center can get out and back inside an hour round trip, not just residents of the lakeside communes themselves. Customer parking is also available in the atelier's own courtyard for anyone driving in from further out.

What an international buyer should know

The website is published in German only, with no English version, so anyone who doesn't read German should expect the first conversation, whether by phone or by email, to happen in German, or should ask ahead whether Zandany can accommodate English. Nothing on the site publishes fixed prices, a standard lead time for a custom commission, or a resizing turnaround, so those points, along with how a deposit or shipping abroad would work, are worth settling directly with Zandany before committing to a design. What is published in writing is the old-gold buy-back policy (pegged to the day's market rate rather than a fixed number) and the after-sales menu itself: resizing, stone repolishing, and stone replacement are all listed as ongoing services rather than one-off perks, which points to a workshop set up to look after a piece for as long as its owner stays in Zürich, or to be reached again once they've moved on.

The verdict

For a couple who wants an engagement or wedding ring built around a specific idea rather than adjusted from a stock design, this is one of the more distinctive addresses in the category: a sixth-generation goldsmith who also cuts his own stones, working from a bench with 30 years of continuous use in the same historic building, and clear continuity from the previous owner rather than a fresh, unproven operator taking over the sign. The absence of an English page and of any published pricing or timeline is a real gap for an expat buyer used to shopping online first and asking questions second, but it closes with one phone call or email rather than ruling the workshop out, and the payoff is an atelier willing to combine goldsmithing and stone-cutting into a single, closely supervised commission from raw material to finished ring.