This morning I popped into Artemis on 214 Gloucester Road for a behind the scenes peek as the team prepares for the Christmas season!

Artemis is a family-run independent business headed by Catherine Amesbury, jewellery designer. It offers beautiful gifts and keepsakes, Christmas decorations and lights, and contemporary hand-made silver jewellery including earrings, necklaces, bracelets and more.

Artemis has been a permanent fixture on Gloucester Road for 7 years, however Catherine has been creating beautiful jewellery and gifts following a visit to Spain more than 20 years ago where she came across some silver plate and leather jewellery.

Such unique jewellery inspired her and she bought some pieces as gifts for friends and received positive feedback and requests for more!

She consequently re-visited Spain a year later and bought two carrier bags of Spanish jewellery for a planned an event at her home to sell the pieces.

As it was nearly Christmas at the time, she decided to order some festive decorations and at her event not only sold all the unique jewellery but all the decorations too!

The next year she started designing and making her own jewellery using silver, semi-precious stones and freshwater pearls and, as they say, the rest is history!

Catherine explains:

“I am passionate about designing and creating my jewellery and I very much enjoy sourcing the elements for my collections which does involve some overseas travel I might say!

“Artemis receives such positive feedback from its customers that it makes all the hard work worthwhile choosing the gifts and decorations to complement my jewellery.  I just love being in the shop – it’s a second home for me!”

Artemis offers an Instant commission Process, in which you can visit Artemis, talk about the piece of jewellery you would like, whether it is for a gift or for yourself, and then Catherine or her fellow jewellery designers, Sarah or Venetia will create the piece while you are there!

While I was at Artemis I watched Sarah create one such piece of jewellery which had been commissioned as a 50th birthday gift, a silver double bangle with a stone hand-picked by the person who had ordered it.

It was fascinating watching the delicate process of jewellery-making and wonderful to see the finished piece!

Catherine and her team have been busy preparing for the Christmas season over the last few weeks. She explained that on the Sunday before the October half-term, the team always hold a shop lock-down when they shut shop and spend the entire day decorating the shop to make it look wonderfully Christmassy!

Catherine explained that Artemis is renowned for its beautiful hand-made Christmas decorations and lights and that every year many people come from outside the local area to buy some.

Artemis is a treasure-trove of beautiful gifts including gloves, purses, slippers, umbrellas and handbags, fragrant hand-creams and soaps, plus silver keepsakes such as Guardian Angel charms.

I particularly loved the new snow globes, the silver letters and stylish scarves and I also spied several stocking filler ideas for my little girl!

A free gift-wrapping service is offered at Artemis with each item being beautifully wrapped in a colour of your choice.

There is a special Christmas Shopping Event planned at Artemis on Friday 1st December from 5 – 9pm. All are invited to pop in to browse the beautiful jewellery, Christmas decorations and gifts at Artemis while enjoying a complimentary festive drink, some nibbles and a special treat on the night!

Artemis is also open on Christmas Eve from 10am – 2pm should you need to do some last-minute Christmas shopping!

If you would like to find out more about Artemis please visit http://www.artemisbristol.co.uk/home.