Unique designer jewellery is within reach of everyone, thanks to the work of a Durham jeweller. And each piece carries a little reminder of the North-East with it wherever it goes.

GAVIN Shelley sits at his workbench in the corner of his tiny shop up a tiny alley in the centre of Durham. He is making an engagement ring for a girl who was a student in Durham two years ago but who now lives in Southend.

"She remembered my work and wanted me to make her ring. She came up last week especially to look at the stone, but it hadn't arrived. I said it would make more of a story for her and now you're writing about it too. This ring gets more interesting all the time," he says.

Gavin designs and makes jewellery. Born in Low Fell, with an accent to prove it, he is a craftsman to his finger tips. At 16, straight from school, he was apprenticed to jeweller Bob Arkless in Newcastle in a little attic room near where the Tyneside Cinema now is.

"A proper old fashioned apprenticeship - I've got the bumps on my head to prove it. I used to get sent to the tool shop in the Grainger Market to ask for a cotton-headed hammer, daft things like that. But Bob gave me a great training, he taught me a lot," Gavin says.

It also perhaps explains his cheerful down to earthness and utter approachability.

He worked for other jewellers, always, it seems in little attic rooms, "Doing everything, making, cleaning, repairing, restoring all styles and types of jewellery, learning what could and couldn't be done. Day in, day out dealing with different materials," he says.

In the days when most jewellery designers train via the art college route, it's the sort of experience that is unmatchable and, these days, hard to get.

And all the time he was developing his own ideas. "I was always designing, right from the very beginning."

His dream was to be in Durham, "my spiritual home" and four years ago he came to his little shop in Saddler's Yard.

"Magic! Fantastic!" he says, the wave of his hand encompassing not just the shop but the tiny alley and the cafe next door.

"I've had all those years tucked away but now I'm meeting the public all the time."

Right on cue a young girl comes in to thank him. He had made a pendant and bangle for her 18th, a present from her uncles. She pops in to say how pleased she was, to tell him about the party.

Customers are a mixture of locals, students and tourists. His jewellery goes all round the world.

About half of what he sells in the shop he has designed and made himself. The work is nearly all in silver "because that's what students in particular want." The designs are simple and bold, innovative and interesting without being outrageous. Many use jet and amber. They are beautiful and wearable. And prices range from £20 to around £250.

Ultimately, he would like to design his own ranges of mass produced jewellery. There are ideas.

Meanwhile, his commissions use more gold as well as silver, as well as diamonds and other stones, anything you like really. As well as wedding and engagement rings, work has included bangles for four friends to celebrate their graduation, cuff links for an oarsman, pendants and rings. Commission prices start at around £150 and vary dramatically depending on materials. Each bespoke piece carries a tiny stamp of Durham cathedral to remember its origins.

"But now", chuckles Gavin. I've got to get on with some work,", turning back to his work bench and that engagement ring. - a designer and craftsman in his element.

Gavin Shelley Jewellery. Saddlers Yard, off Saddler Street, Durham. Tel: 0191-383 1221. Closed Mondays.