Goldfuchs

Goldfuchs sits on Kolinplatz, one of the squares that make up Zug's old town, on the same side of the lake as the rest of the historic centre. Stefan Reichmuth has run the goldsmith bench here since 1996, and the workshop's registered name, "zur Schatztrue," still turns up in Swiss business directories even though the website itself trades as Goldfuchs. The site consistently describes the work happening "an meiner Goldschmiede-Werkbank," at my workbench, not a team's, and no other goldsmith is named anywhere on it. That framing, plus the near-total absence of a sales floor or storefront staff on the site, is the strongest signal that this is a solo operation rather than a firm with a bench of assistants.

Thirty years on one craft

The workshop's own history page reads more like a personal log than marketing copy, and it is unusually specific for a small business site. Reichmuth opened the shop in 1996 at Zeughausgasse 13, naming it "Paradiesli," and by his own account welcomed his first customers just before midnight on opening day. In 2004 the workshop had a bigger refit, a new floor, armoured glass for the display windows, and a new name: "zur Schatztrue," the one that still shows up in Swiss commercial registers today. A painting studio followed in 2012, opened that October in Unterägeri, giving Reichmuth a second outlet for the illustration and painting work he does alongside jewellery. By 2015 he had folded 3D design and 3D printing into custom commissions, a real shift from filing metal by hand to modelling a ring on screen before it is cast. When the building on Zeughausgasse went in for a full renovation in 2019, he moved the goldsmith side to its current address at Kolinplatz. The atelier got another overhaul in 2023: new furniture, new service counters, and an oak floor. The site marks 2026 as a 30-year anniversary, dated back to that first midnight opening.

Across that span, the homepage states plainly, 500 individual Partnerringe have come out of the workshop, no two the same. That is a specific, sourced figure rather than a round marketing number, and it lines up with the timeline above and with the site's own framing of every ring as a Unikat, a one-off piece.

What you actually get

Partnerringe here means rings for a couple made to their own idea, not picked out of a case. The site's own description is straightforward: "klassisch und zeitlos oder modern und individuell gestaltet," classic and timeless or modern and individually designed, described throughout as handcrafted from high-grade materials. The general ring section widens that out to engagement rings, solitaires and statement pieces, so a couple after a diamond solitaire rather than a matching pair of bands is still in the right place. Alongside rings, Reichmuth takes on Spezialaufträge, one-off commissions in gold and silver for special occasions, and he reworks old jewellery: pieces a client no longer wears can be melted down and reforged into something new, or simply repaired if they still fit but no longer shine. None of this is presented as a catalogue with fixed options; the site frames every piece as something made after a conversation about what the couple actually wants.

How the two ateliers are organised

The goldsmith side at Kolinplatz keeps regular hours Tuesday through Saturday, mornings and afternoons, closed Sunday and Monday, with anything outside that window handled "nach Vereinbarung," by arrangement over the phone. The painting studio sits apart from the jewellery business entirely, out by the Ägerisee in Oberägeri, and doubles as a small gallery: Reichmuth keeps some of his paintings and illustrations on permanent display there, alongside a rotating selection at the Kolinplatz workshop. The site's own copy treats a visit to the painting studio as an outing in its own right, worth pairing with a trip round the Ägerital rather than a quick errand. For anything bought through the online shop rather than commissioned in person, PayPal is the payment method the footer lists; nothing else is specified.

How it compares in this category

Most of the other names clustered around Zug, Baar and Cham run either as multi-generation family houses or as bigger boutique operations with more than one person behind the counter. Goldfuchs sits at the solo end of that spectrum: one goldsmith who has kept the same trade going, under a couple of different shop names, on more or less the same few streets of Zug's old town for three decades. That has a real trade-off. There is no showroom of finished rings to browse and no separate sales staff to field a walk-in question while Reichmuth is at the bench; everything runs through a phone call, an email, or a booked appointment. What it buys in return is a ring designed and made by one identifiable person from first sketch to final polish, with decades of that person's own past commissions as the track record rather than a brand's.

What to weigh before you commit

Two things are worth knowing before an international buyer picks up the phone. First, the site is entirely in German, with no English version and no mention anywhere of English-language consultations; a couple who wants the whole process handled in English should confirm that directly before booking a first appointment rather than assume it. Second, Goldfuchs does not publish prices, minimum order sizes, or turnaround times for a custom Partnerring anywhere on the site, so anyone working to a budget or a wedding date needs those numbers from Reichmuth directly rather than from the page. Neither point is a reason to skip the workshop; both are ordinary gaps that a first phone call or email closes quickly, and they are the same gaps a couple would need to close with most small, owner-run ateliers in this category.

The verdict

For a couple who wants a genuinely custom Partnerring made by the same hands that will hand it over, rather than a design pulled from a catalogue, Goldfuchs is a strong, low-key option in the middle of Zug's old town. Thirty years and 500 rings is a real track record for a solo maker, the range of work covers everything from a first sketch to reworking an inherited piece, and the painting studio by the Ägerisee gives the workshop a second, genuinely different side worth a visit on its own. Anyone arriving from outside Switzerland should confirm the language of the consultation and get firm numbers on price and timeline before committing, but that is a short call, not a reason to look elsewhere.