As a small child Catherine Best loved being in the outdoors, creating things out of wood in her father’s workshop. Today her name is synonymous with beautiful jewellery, but she traces her interest back to those early days of childhood.
“I used to make snail houses and tiny wooden coffins for dead birds, I really enjoyed making things and would lose myself totally when I was out there making them,” says Catherine.
So, the die was cast on what was to become a high-octane career that took off almost from the moment she left college in the UK to return to her home in Guernsey. She was, she admits, in a hurry to get going on what was to become the great driving force of her life.
At the beginning of her training, Catherine was adamant that she would do things her way. “I suppose I have always been a bit of a rebel. When they teach you how to design jewellery you’re supposed to use base metals, but I couldn’t see the point. I decided that, if I was going to spend all that amount of time making a piece, it should be the real thing! Otherwise at the end of the course you would have nothing to show for it.”
Catherine convinced her father that she should be using gold and silver. He loaned her the money to buy the precious metals and stones – and the distinctive Catherine Best brand was born. “I came to a deal with him and, luckily for me, he went for it. It did make me very aware that I had to get it right first time.”
When Catherine came home she moved into the beautiful old Mill, which is now a thriving studio workshop and retail outlet – and the family home.
“I worked like crazy and struggled to build up stock,” says Catherine. In the early days, she started trading by attending sporadic craft fairs to build up a reputation. In the late 1980s she did suffer a major set back when all her jewellery was stolen from a hotel foyer showcase. It represented years of hard work. “I was so naïve. There was so much work there and I lost the lot. I had only insured it for the value of the materials, not for the hours I had worked. It was a hard lesson to learn.”