AS the festive season approaches many people might dream of finding a piece of jewellery under the Christmas tree.

While most will be happy to settle for something bought in the high street, a visit to a London-trained craftsman, now based in Weardale, might make them change their minds.

Mr Steven Gregory is an independent designer and goldsmith who has his makers' mark, sgd, registered at the Assay Office in London. He has won several awards from the Goldsmiths' Craft Council for excellence in craftsmanship and design. Every piece he makes is unique and handmade - so unique, in fact, that he has had to devise different tools and ways of making things since he began to work independently.

Although his designs are exclusive, he is keen to point out that he makes goods that are within most people's price range.

"Our customer base is taken from factory owners to factory workers," he stressed.

Trained at the Medway college of design in Kent, Mr Gregory then joined David Thomas, who has worked on the Crown Jewels, and was based in Mayfair next to the famous Purdey's gun shop. He then moved to the firm of John Donald, with shops in Richmond (Surrey), the City and Bahrain. He was working as a designer for John Donald when a Tudor rose brooch was commissioned for the former premier, Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

Although he has had and continues to have many famous clients, Mr Gregory remains discreet and refuses to namedrop. But he and his wife Pauline, a gemmologist, often enjoy a quiet smile to themselves when they spot their jewellery gracing the great and the good on their television screen.

Although he has chosen to live in rural Weardale, his life was not always so tranquil as he rode his motorcycle through the London traffic to deliver expensive, commissioned items to wealthy customers.

"I remember taking a piece to a top hotel and the doorman refusing to let me in," said Mr Gregory, who had long hair under his crash helmet in those days. "When I finally managed to deliver it, the client handed over £35,000 in cash, which I had to put in my rucksack and drive back to base!

"I had visions of falling off the bike or being involved in an accident, and not being able to explain to the boss what had happened to the £35,000."

But despite having his foot in the door of the top London outlets, he had a hankering to become independent, with his own workshop in an isolated rural location. Having a friend in Weardale, he took the plunge ten years ago, working part-time and using a coal cellar as his workshop, before he was successful enough to be able to go full-time three years ago.

As well as making jewellery, some specially commissioned and others designed for craft markets and fairs, Mr Gregory has also been commissioned to make several unusual pieces.

A recent project involved making a communion chalice and ciborium - a receptacle with an arched cover, used to hold the eucharist - for a local church. These took up to a year to design and produce and are in regular use at services after featuring in an exhibition at the Goldsmiths' Hall in London.

Currently busy fulfilling Christmas commissions, he is soon to work on a salt - a large goblet-shaped salt cellar - featuring gold and silverwork, together with Ann Roxburgh, a glass engraver at the Sunderland glass centre.

He is also putting a piece of fluorspar into a pendant for a competition piece, which is a delicate and painstaking operation.

"It is a piece of clear fluorspar, quite rare, and there is always a chance it will break in the setting, as it is so fragile," said Mr Gregory.

How does he make a living, moving from the City to the wilds of Weardale?

"If you had told me 15 years ago that I would be doing this, I would have not thought it possible," he said. "But there are lots of micro-businesses in the dale and we do much of our selling on the internet."

He illustrated his point by telling of being contacted by a bagpipe maker in Edinburgh who in turn had been contacted by a Canadian who wanted him to make a millennium set of Northumbrian pipes. The Scot asked Mr Gregory to make gold and silver ferrules for those, the deal being struck by the Canadian attaching a mobile telephone to a laptop computer while sitting on a hillside in Afghanistan.

Several customers who have visited Mr Gregory's workshop in person have gone on to buy caravans in the area.

"I can see why, when I look out of my window," he said. "I get much of the inspiration for my designs, whether historical or modern, from the spectacular views here."

Among the more unusual items he has made are scale model pieces of artillery, a wedding ring incorporating a fish for a man who owned a fish packing factory, and a tartan wedding ring for a famous Scottish family.

"I am always happy to capitalise on my customers' ideas or themes and build them into a design," he said. "I am often asked to melt down old or broken jewellery or reset stones in new designs, making family heirlooms wearable again."

In what he describes as a feat of miniature engineering, he struck medals from HMS Trincomalee, using copper from the hull of the ship.

But one of the most expensive pieces he ever worked on was a suite of jewellery, featuring emeralds and diamonds, when he was based in the City in the 80s.

"I estimated its value at that time to be about £200,000, but I am sure I was way off the mark and it was well in excess of that," he added.

One of his smallest commissions, size-wise, which he is currently working on, is a pair of candlesticks for a doll's house.

The amount of items he can produce in an average week ranges from one to 20, but complex pieces can take up to a year to finish, as the painstaking work required has to be broken down into shorter periods of concentration.

Mr Gregory, who is a member of the British Jewellers' Association, and his wife will sell at various venues around the region in the run-up to Christmas.

Dates include Brancepeth Castle from November 23-25 and Durham town hall from November 30 until December 2.

The couple are also usually at the monthly craft fairs at the Bowes museum in Barnard Castle.

Anyone wishing to contact them can telephone 01388 517070, e-mail steve