Norman and Jess had kept in touch from the time they met in 1959 and were married in Dundee on 3rd July 1965. When Norman left college in June 1966 they moved from 
Aberdeen to a rented house in Glenrothes and, to their great delight their daughter, Romany, was born on 3rd July that year.

 

At the time, Norman was working in the Tullis Russell paper mill as an electrician’s mate for the summer. From the split second he left college, and probably before, Norman’s dream was to make a full-time living from making jewellery, to do what excited him and kept his creative energy flowing.

 

Towards that end, with minimal equipment, he set up a workshop in the 6 X 5 foot garden shed and used every spare moment to build up a stock of jewellery. This making went on throughout the paper mill job, the fail-safe year’s teacher-training in Dundee (1966-67) and the, again fail-safe, job teaching art in Auchmuty Junior Secondary School in 1967.

 

That tiny shed is, in effect where his business began! During his teacher-training year he and Jess were seriously struggling financially with nothing but his term-time grant to live on. Silver was expensive and had to be pre-paid. So when Jess was offered a job in the English Department at Auchmuty Junior Secondary School, where her Dad was Head of Science at the time, she had no option but to take it.