St Matthews Jewelers

St Matthews Jewelers is a jewelry and watch repair store on Brownsboro Road in the St. Matthews neighborhood of Louisville, with a family history that goes back further than the shop's own 1982 founding date suggests. According to the store's own account, the original family business was started by the current owner's grandfather to provide both optical and jewelry services — a common pairing decades ago — and even made eyeglasses for the Navy during World War II. That optical side of the business eventually fell away when Bill Lawson, the founder's son, took over and shifted the focus entirely to jewelry. Bill and a partner opened St. Matthews Jewelers in the early 1980s, moving to its current Brownsboro Road location in 1988. After Bill's death, his son Billy took over the business, now assisted by his wife Kelly and by Chad Davis. The shop offers custom design jewelry, watch and jewelry repair, engraving, and buys gold and other precious metals, and it also services grandfather clocks — an unusual addition for a jewelry store. St Matthews Jewelers works with a range of vendors and designers across jewelry, watches, and clocks rather than carrying a single house brand. With more than 40 years of continuous operation under one family and a 4.2 Google rating, it's a shop whose current identity is built as much on that multi-generational history as on its present-day repair and design services.