Bernard Hurtig Jewel Gallery, a fixture at Hilton Hawaiian Village for 23 years, began winding down its 40-year-old family business Sunday with an end-of-lease-sale that offered up to 50 percent off merchandise.
"We’re both retiring," said Bernard’s wife, Helen, adding that the store will close at the end of January.
The Hurtigs "are like family to our employees as well as our guests, and we will truly miss having their store here at Hilton Hawaiian Village," said Gwen LeBlanc, area director of leasing.
The store by the penguin pond at Alii Tower sells fine jewelry including Tahitian and South Sea pearl and Hawaiian jewelry, trademarked Swiss Hawaiian watches, objets d’art, Japanese Imari porcelain and netsuke. Netsuke are rare, Japanese miniature carvings of animals, people or other subjects, and both Bernard and Helen Hurtig are globally renowned experts in the art form.
It is a store that Barron Hilton, a member of the hotel chain’s founding family, asked them to open, she said.
The Hurtigs were leased a prime location at the base of Alii Tower, which was being constructed as a concierge hotel-within-a-hotel 23 years ago. It was one of two stores they had on the resort property, for a time. The other was by Tapa Tower, but they decided to close it for strategic reasons.
When they opened at Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Hurtigs already had their flagship store at what was then the Kahala Hilton Hotel.
Over the years they also ran a Time Tower kiosk at Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center to sell the Hurtigs’ line of watches. In operation for about five years, the kiosk won an award for the highest sales per square foot of any store at Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, she said.
When they settled in Hawaii in the early 1970s, they actually intended to retire.
By the time they moved here, Bernard already had completed successful careers as a car dealer in Canada and as a regional leader for Encyclopaedia Britannica in Japan and Europe, and he had authored a book about netsuke, for which he developed a passion while in Japan.
"He felt that there was so little knowledge about netsuke," she said, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, a book with 1,000 pictures would be a great contribution to the centuries-old art and to collectors, he thought.
The first book featured all-color photos of netsuke, and each collector was permitted to do a full page of favorites, she said. The book was published in 1971.
The second book, which she referred to as "Record Breakers," had photographs of netsuke, mostly 1 to 1 1/2 inches tall, set within natural-looking backgrounds Helen created. "All of our photographs for ‘Record Breakers’ were taken in-house, and the photographs were hand-tipped," meaning they were glued into the books by hand, she explained. Paper specially designed by an artist in Japan was used for the inside cover of the book, which sold for $1,500 — in the early 1970s.
Helen soon published the Journal of the International Netsuke Collectors Society for several years. A five-year set of the journals sold at auction at Christie’s for $445 in 1995. Bernard published several more netsuke books, and though rare, copies are available online ranging from $41 to $5,774.
Also while in Japan they developed an appreciation for pearls, and while in Italy they "became enthralled with Italian jewelry —they play with gold and they create beautiful things, and so that’s how we started the jewelry business," she said.
They would host global netsuke conventions at the Kahala Hilton, where their jewelry business had been established in 1973.
"I used to bring Sotheby’s here for auctions for our delegates at the Kahala Hilton," she said. "In those days our clients were presidents and kings from all over the world."
The Hurtigs were known for designing their own jewelry, and "in the beginning we’d bring in Italian jewelers from Italy to work for us," she said.
The Hurtigs established a factory for jewelry and watchmaking, "and we had a long, wonderful period of exciting times with exciting people who came not only for netsuke, but for fabulous jewels."
Most of the Hurtigs’ half-dozen employees are long-timers, including manager Jeannie Oshiro, who has been with them for 31 years.
Bernard Hurtig’s business life started out in Canada, where he and Helen were born, raised and married.
He was a successful car dealer and was written up by a popular Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper columnist "as the only honest car dealer he ever came across," Helen said. "That was back in the ’50s."
Then came record-breaking successful years with Encyclopaedia Britannica in Japan and Europe, beginning in 1963, prior to their move to Hawaii a little less than a decade later.
Bernard and Helen will mark their 55th wedding anniversary in January.
"Whenever a well-established retailer leaves the marketplace, that leaves a hole," said Carol Pregill, executive director of industry organization Retail Merchants of Hawaii. "Perhaps philosophically we wave them a fond farewell, as they’re leaving the marketplace willingly rather than being forced out … and perhaps after 40 years this will be well-deserved rest for them," Pregill said.
