The husband-and-wife jewellers closing their Bath workshop after 22 years
There is a side street in Bath where, for twenty-two years, you could open a black-glass door, hear a brass bell ring once, and be greeted in person by one of the two people who would make whatever piece of jewellery you walked in to commission. There are not many places like it left in England. There will soon be one fewer.
Audrey and Roman opened the workshop in 2003 on what they describe as “a borrowed lease and an embarrassingly small float”. They had no second branch, no apprentices to outsource to, and no plan beyond making, by hand, jewellery they themselves would have been proud to wear.
In May, after a quiet two years of trying to keep going, they announced they would close.
“We'd rather close honestly,” Audrey says, “than dilute the name to stay open.”
A diagnosis they did not announce
Roman, now 71, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2023. For a year, they told no-one — not their customers, not even their suppliers in Sri Lanka and Colombia. They tried lighter tools. They tried bracing. They tried a younger apprentice who came in twice a week.
“It works for a while,” Audrey says of the adaptations. “Then it doesn't. The hand that has set eleven thousand stones knows when it isn't doing it properly any more. Roman knew before anyone else.”
The decision to close, when it finally came, was made not in a meeting but at the kitchen table. “He looked at me,” Audrey recalls. “He said: I want to walk out of the workshop. I don't want to be walked out of it.”
Twenty-two years, eleven thousand pieces, one bench
The workshop has produced, by their own count, just over eleven thousand pieces in twenty-two years. Each one carries Roman's mark engraved on the inside — invisible to anyone but the wearer. “He used to say,” Audrey laughs, “the only person who needs to know it's his is the woman who wears it.”
They never reproduced a design. Customers asking for a replica were politely turned away. “If you make the same ring twice,” Roman has said, “the second one is not made with the same hand that made the first. It is a different ring.”
The decision not to reproduce — combined with their decision not to scale, license, or franchise the name — means the closing cabinet is, mathematically, the last collection. Audrey & Roman will, by the end of this year, no longer exist as a going concern. The marks Roman engraved on the inside of eleven-thousand-and-something rings are, from now on, the only ones that will ever exist.
“Once these pieces are gone, Roman's mark will not appear on another one.”
A goodbye sale that breaks the British rules
The discount is between 40% and 80% across the cabinet. Most pieces are reduced 40–70%; a small number of one-of-ones, which can no longer be reproduced because the specific stones were not reordered, are reduced by as much as 80%. Audrey is unusually candid about this:
“We could have run a five-day flash sale at 30% off and cleared the cabinet quickly,” she says. “We chose not to. The point isn't to clear stock; it's to send every piece to somebody who will actually wear it. So we've priced them at what we feel is honest, given they will never be cleaned by Roman again.”
Every order ships from Bath with the Birmingham Assay Office hallmark, an independent insurance valuation, free tracked UK delivery, and a 14-day no-questions return. The lifetime polish promise — which the workshop has honoured for the past 22 years — continues after closing, with Audrey personally posting from a kitchen-table office for “at least the next ten years.”
What happens to the door
The hand-painted Audrey & Roman sign above the Bath shop window is, by Roman's own admission, “not a museum piece”. He finished it himself one Sunday in 2003 with a tin of black enamel and a single sable brush. When the workshop closes, the sign comes down with it.
The shop space has been leased to an independent bookseller. The tools are going to the apprentice. The cabinet is being sent, one Royal Mail Special Delivery at a time, to people who will wear what is in it.
The website — audreyromanjewels.com— will stay live until the cabinet is empty. Audrey is firm that the sale will not be extended.
“We will not extend. We cannot. Roman cannot make more pieces, and we will not put anyone else's work under our name.”
The signs of a closing atelier are quiet ones. Tools wrapped in cloth. Two empty drawer-runners where a third cabinet used to stand. The order book — twenty-two years of it, in three leather volumes — is being archived to the Bath Record Office, by their own request, so the work is not lost when the workshop is.
Audrey will not commit to staying in Bath when it closes. “We'll see where Roman is best,” she says simply. “Probably the coast. He's mentioned the coast.”
“The hand that has set eleven thousand stones knows when it isn't doing it properly any more. Roman knew before anyone else.”
Some of the pieces still in the cabinet
A representative sample of what remains, with original prices shown beside the new. Every item is one of one and ships from Bath with the Birmingham Assay Office hallmark.
Letters from twenty-two years of customers
From the postbag Audrey has been answering between dispatches. Names and pieces are theirs, published with permission.
View the closing cabinet
The full collection — what remains, with original tags shown beside new prices — is at audreyromanjewels.com. When a piece sells, the listing comes down.
Visit audreyromanjewels.com →At least 10% of pieces are reduced by the full 80%. Average discount across the cabinet is 52%. Original prices were those charged in the Bath atelier between April 2024 and April 2026.