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After coaching the U.S. National Snowboarding team, teaching at-risk kids for the school district, and co-founding Bootleg Courier Co., Doug E. Moore started a company handcrafting custom jewelry
by Brad Bynum
bradb@ newsreview.com
PHOTOS/ALLISON YOUNG
“This economy is a problem,” says Doug E. Moore. “But people are still getting married … and guys are still getting into trouble and then trying to get out of the doghouse.” Moore is the founder, proprietor and fabricator of D Street Designs, a local custom jewelry company. Moore meets with his customers, plans and creates original one-of-a-kind handD Street Designs is at crafted jewelry pieces—rings, 45 St Lawrence Ave. necklaces, bracelets, earrings and For more information, more. He’s worked in the industry off visit http://dstreet designs.com. and on since the mid-’90s but just launched D Street Designs in 2011. There is no D Street in Reno—and Moore’s small workshop isn’t located in Sparks. The D Street is a reference to his first name, and his shop is located on St. Lawrence Avenue in Midtown—in the same building as Reno Public House.
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JANUARY 10, 2013
One Moore time
Moore is an interesting guy—he walked a labyrinth of different paths before becoming a full-time jeweler. He graduated from McQueen High School back in 1990, and then spent 10 years in Park City, Utah, snowboarding and coaching snowboarding—including a stint coaching for the U.S. national team. In 1996, he took a jewelry fabrication class at the Kimball Art Center in Park City. “That was the beginning of the end,” he says. He quickly developed a passion for the art and craft of jewelrymaking. In 2000, he moved back to Northern Nevada. He considered pursuing jewelry-making full time, but decided against it. “I fell for that old artists’ stigma, that artists can’t make a living doing art—I maintained that for years,” he says. Instead, he went to work as an educator for the Washoe County
School District, working primarily with at-risk kids. Then, in 2008, he cofounded Bootleg Courier Company, a bicycle messenger service. All the while he maintained jewelry fabrication as a hobby, and, after his partners bought him out of Bootleg in 2010, he spent a couple of years working for Robert Ince, another local jeweler. And then he launched D Street Designs in 2011. The company’s logo is a crooked star. “I’m always a little off, whether it’s oppositional defiance disorder, I don’t know, but I’m always a little skewed,” he says. Though centrally located in Midtown’s locally oriented retail area, Moore’s shop is definitely more of a work space than a retail front. There’s a work bench, but no display case. That’s because the emphasis is on custom jobs rather than selling premade stock—though Moore does limited runs of signature pieces, like a crow’s skull necklace, and he’s currently developing a Valentine’s Day
line that will include a few cheeky pieces, with black diamonds and lewd designs—“for those who are jaded about love.”
As is the custom
Moore says that though he enjoys working with precious metals, like gold and silver, that’s not his favorite part of designing and fabricating jewelry. “It’s art,” he says. “I like creating art in whatever medium. I love the start-to-finish process of completing a project.” That creative process of seeing a project through from the shadow of an idea to a blazing, shining completion is something he says was lacking from his experiences as an educator. “I just saw a one-year sliver,” he says. “I never saw where they came from or where they went. … I want to create all day and make people happy. At the school district, not many people are happy.”
BIG HE ADERS GIZA 25pt 25k SMALL HEADERS GIZA 15pt 55k (60% OF BIG HE AD)
Above, Doug E. Moore at work in his studio. At right, his workbench and examples of his jewelry.
