Kurt Auer Goldschmied

Kurt Auer runs his bench alone, from a shopfront at Mutschellenstrasse 175 in Wollishofen, the residential lakeside quarter south of the city centre rather than the tourist-facing jewellery row on Bahnhofstrasse. His own site dates the business to 1991. A look at the Zürich commercial register, via a Moneyhouse listing, fills in a detail the marketing copy leaves out: the workshop first entered the register in 1995 as a two-person partnership, "Zur Goldschmitte, Kurt Auer & Co," with a second partner named Martina Auer. That partnership dissolved in 2008 when she stepped down, and Auer has traded solo since, as a registered sole proprietorship named "Zur Goldschmitte Kurt Auer." The register still lists the firm as active, which is worth checking for a category where a one-person workshop can quietly wind down without its website ever coming offline. So can the site itself: its page index carried a fresh update as recently as January this year, and there is no trace anywhere online, in search results or on the business register, of a closure, a move, or a change of hands.

Auer describes himself as both a goldsmith and a gemstone setter (Edelsteinfasser), a distinction worth naming because it means stone-setting on a commission stays on his own bench rather than going out to a subcontractor, which not every small atelier in this category can claim. The shop is a two-minute walk from the Morgental tram and bus stop, served by tram 7 and buses 33, 66 and 70, with customer parking directly in front of the door for anyone driving in from elsewhere in the canton.

The V-Collection

What sets this workshop apart from most of the other independent goldsmiths in this category is the V-Collection, a registered ring design sold not as a single model but as dozens of individually named pieces. The site's own page index lists 40 separately named rings, from Aura, Dragon and Polarstern to Zuckerhut, Genau and Om, each with its own page and photographs. None of them is a production run: the site states plainly that every ring made under the V-Collection name is a one-off rather than a repeated series, so buying into the collection means committing to a specific named design rather than picking a size and finish off a shelf.

The clearest picture of what that looks like once finished is a wedding-ring pair on the site named Evelyne & Tom, made for two clients whose names give the rings their title. Evelyne's band carries 46 graduated diamonds set in white gold around a 0.62 carat orange sapphire and a 0.12 carat ruby; Tom's carries 34 diamonds around a 0.50 carat diamond and a matching 0.115 carat ruby. Two rubies are cut as tiny hearts, positioned to meet exactly when the rings sit side by side, a detail the site describes as symbolic of the couple's bond. Few of the other ateliers in this category publish this level of stone-by-stone detail for an individual commission, and it is a useful preview of what a finished piece here can look like.

What a commission conversation is actually like

This is also where the workshop's approach differs from the usual bespoke pitch, and it is worth being direct about it. For the V-Collection specifically, Auer's own philosophy page states that he takes full creative freedom over the design, and that a new ring is built, in his words, "not to your wishes, but to my creative inspiration." A prospective buyer can look at existing rings and stones, or bring in a stone of their own, and say what they like and dislike, but the page is explicit that this is the extent of the client's input: the rest, in Auer's phrasing, "becomes a surprise." He frames it openly as a kind of dare, asking visitors whether they have the courage for it, rather than promising a design-it-yourself process.

That is a real change of pace from the collaborative language on the site's separate wedding-ring page, which invites customers to bring their own ideas so the two of you can design the rings together, and from the general offer on the homepage to take an old or unused gemstone, or an inherited piece of jewellery, and rework it into something new. A newcomer with a specific brief already in mind, an heirloom stone to reset, an exact style already sketched, is likely better served through that general commissioning route than through the V-Collection, where the point is precisely that the final design is not the client's to specify. Since the site does not spell out exactly where one path ends and the other begins, it is worth asking directly, in the first conversation, which of the two processes applies to what you want made.

Materials, access and what is not published

On sourcing, the site is specific rather than vague: the footer of every page states that its materials and alloys come from "100% unproblematic sources," further specified as "100% from European recycling" and "100% Swiss craftsmanship." That claim is not paired with a named third-party certification or auditor on the site, so it should be read as the workshop's own account of its sourcing rather than an externally verified standard.

For a newcomer to Zürich, a few gaps are worth flagging before a visit rather than discovering them at the shop door. The site is entirely in German, with the single English phrase "Finest Jewelery since 1991" used as a tagline; nothing on it promises service in English, so it is worth confirming on the phone before booking a consultation if that matters to you. No prices are published anywhere on the site, for the V-Collection or for a general commission, so a first conversation is needed before you have any real sense of budget. There is also nothing published about export paperwork, customs, or sending a finished piece abroad, relevant if you expect to leave Switzerland again in a few years and want to take a ring with you or have it forwarded on afterward; that is a question to raise directly rather than assume an answer to. A separate trade listing for the shop does note that it accepts cash, Maestro/EC, Postcard, Eurocard/Mastercard and Visa, so paying with a foreign card should not be a problem once you are ready to buy.

The shop keeps modest hours: Tuesday to Friday from 14.00 to 18.00 and Saturday from 10.00 to 15.00, closed Mondays, with appointments outside those hours available by phone. Nothing on the site suggests you can watch the bench work in progress; what is on offer is a look at finished pieces in the shop itself, plus, per the same trade listing, the ordinary after-sales work of a working goldsmith: repairs, adjustments and reworking, alongside old-gold purchase and valuation. A ring bought here is not orphaned once you own it.

The verdict

For an expat drawn to something that does not already exist as a catalogue item, and willing to hand over creative control rather than dictate a spec, this is a genuinely distinctive stop in Wollishofen: 40 named, one-off ring designs, in-house stone setting, and materials sourcing the site is willing to describe in specific terms rather than leave vague. The catch is mostly about process rather than quality: there is no English-language guarantee, no published pricing, and the V-Collection itself is built to surprise you rather than match a brief, so it suits a buyer drawn to that idea more than one who already knows exactly what they want. Anyone who does want a precise design from their own stone or an heirloom piece is better off starting with Auer's general commissioning and reworking service, discussed with him directly, rather than with the V-Collection pages.