Walker and Son Inc: Outliving Generations

by Charles McGuigan 08.2026

EJ (Ernest, Jr.) Walker’s knack for the creation of jewelry seems entwined with the DNA strands of the double helix that makes him who he is. But if not innate, this artistry came to him at a very early age. In some ways, from the moment of his birth he was immersed in the world of jewelry making, baptized in it by both his parents.

Out in Northridge, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, EJ’s father, Ernest, and his mother, Susan, owned two shops. “One was called the Metal Exchange, and then there was O'Neal Jewelers,” EJ says.

From the time he was in a stroller, EJ, with eyes wide, would take in every movement of every jeweler who worked at a bench in his parents’ shop. In a word, he was mesmerized by it all, and was slowly absorbing every drop of knowledge about what would become his profession.

A few years after the family left California and returned to Richmond, they opened up a jewelry store at Laurel Park Shopping Center off Hungary Road. Called The Gold Rush, EJ was a constant presence there. “Every day when I got out of school I went to the shop,” he says. “That was from the time I was in elementary school all the way through high school at Tucker.”

When he was just eight years old, EJ decided to create his first piece of jewelry—a pair of earrings for his mother. It began with two copper pennies. He flattened them both in a metal roller so they were thin oblong pendants, and then bored a small hole at the top of each one. Next, he selected two of his mother’s most expensive Australian boulder opals. Each opal cabochon was worth hundreds of dollars. With hammer in hand, the young EJ smashed the gems and then glued the tiny bits of opal, not much more than grains of sand at that point, to the flattened pennies. He used Super Glue to affix the gems,  and in the process glued his fingers together.

“Mom loved them (the penny/opal earrings) cause they came from her son and she loves her son,” EJ remembers.

As the business grew, EJ’s father, who was by then handling all jewelry repairs for BEST Products, moved The Gold Rush to a three-story building near the intersection of Parham and Staples Mill Roads. Here, EJ would learn the intricacies of craft from a host of talented jewelers.

“We had at least ten or twelve jewelers there,” he says.  And always underfoot was EJ. “I was there every day,” he says. “Stringing pearls and getting in the jewelers' ways.”

At The Gold Rush, he was exposed to every conceivable technique. He remembers a jeweler who originally hailed from Jamaica. “He'd use modern tools, but the tools that he most enjoyed using were ones that he made himself,” says EJ. “Anything you could describe to that guy, he could see it in his head and he could make it. I lived on the left hand side of his bench just watching him work.”

Shortly after the beginning of the new millennium, EJ’s parents divorced and The Gold Rush was no more. 

EJ was about eighteen at the time, so when his mother became a flight attendant and his father went back to teaching, he got a job with Capri Jewelers. “I was his youngest manager,” he says.  “I managed his store on Winter Pock.”

He managed stores for a couple corporate chains as well—Reed’s and Whitehall Jewelers. And then he went to work for KAY Jewelers. “I managed their store in Asheville, North Carolina,” says EJ. “Then they moved me to Baltimore.”

Because of his ability to transform poorly performing stores into big sellers, EJ was moved frequently. Back in 2009 KAY’s began letting go of their highest paid managers. “And though I was one of their youngest managers, I was making a lot, because every time I moved they paid me more money.  So they laid me off.”

EJ took a break from the jewelry business and went to work as a front desk manager at the Hilton Hotel and Spa out in Short Pump.

And then shortly after his daughter was born, he took a job with USA Discounters and opened Fletchers Jewelers for them at South Park Mall. He worked there for about a year and a half, and then his father, who was planning on remarrying, asked EJ if he could get him a deal on a wedding band.

“You still have all the equipment at the house?” EJ asked him.

“Yeah," said Ernest.

“Okay, cool,” his son said. “Let's get a bottle of wine, and we'll make you a ring tonight." That same night, father and son made the wedding ring.

And the next day, EJ’s dad said, “We need to open another jewelry store.”

“What will we call it?” said EJ.

“Let's call it Walker and Son."

"All right, but let's call it Walker and Son Inc.”

Six months later the shop opened on MacArthur Avenue. That was fifteen years ago this month.

From the very beginning, EJ attracted a strong following. And there’s good reason for this. His custom- jewelry work is second to none, and he also repairs jewelry onsite, or recreates new jewelry out of family heirlooms.

Here’s the thing, too: It’s brick-and-mortar. You actually know your jeweler, and can see his work up close and personal. Not at all like ordering online what turns out to be crap, mass-produced out of inferior raw materials somewhere a half-world away. By contrast this is a small intimate space, where you can peek into the back room and watch EJ at work over his jeweler’s bench, or else speak with him in the showroom.

EJ can do just about anything from rings to pendants. And he uses methods that have been around for generations. There are no shortcuts, and EJ handles every step himself.

“I want to say more than fifty percent of the people who call themselves jewelers now only really work with computers,” he says. “And then they have a jeweler finish the goods. We do it all right here.”

EJ mentions the repair work he does in the shop.  “Eight out of ten jewelers nowadays have to ship stuff out to get it repaired,” he says. “We do it all here in house.”

When creating a custom piece, the first step is talking with the customer, and showing in two-dimensions what the finished product will look like.  “I'll just start drawing pieces, and normally I'll draw ten pieces, and usually it's the first one that I drew that the people like the most.”

Once approved, EJ begins crafting the piece. “I use old school methods and old school techniques to make modern jewelry,” he says.

He then tells me something extra special about one-of-a-kind fine jewelry. “It is something that will outlive generations,” he says. “I've made pieces for some customers who have said, ‘I want to be buried in this.’  The body may decompose, but the jewelry is still going to be there.”

As I’m thinking of ancient civilizations, from Mezzo America to Egypt’s Nilotic shores, and the burial sites there, and the glint of gold among bones, EJ mentions his son, Ernest, III, and his daughter, Rachel. “He is eleven, she is fifteen going on twenty-seven,” says EJ. Both kids have artistic leanings and have watched their father create jewelry from the time they were just crawling.

“This could one day be a third-generation jewelry store,” says EJ Walker.

Walker and Son Inc Jewelry Store

4038 MacArthur Avenue

Richmond, Virginia, 23227

(804) 266-1584