R.I.'s Jewelry Industry History in Search of a Permanent Home - 0 views
started by kbojezhang44 on 08 Nov 22
started by kbojezhang44 on 08 Nov 22
started by kbojezhang44 on 08 Nov 22
started by kbojezhang44 on 08 Nov 22
CRANSTON- The Providence Jewelry Museum is not easy to find. It's on a dead end street in Cranston, not Providence. There are no visitor-friendly signs directing tourists to the front door; it's open by appointment only. But the nonprofit museum, with an office in Providence, houses a big part of the state's industrial past: 50 Providence-made machines, 200 pieces of jewelry and 20,000 company samples spanning more than two centuries of jewelry making. "We made everything," from watch fobs and cuff links to tiaras and mood rings, says museum director Peter DiCristofaro. The men and women who made the machines and jewelry were "unknown Michelangelos," he says. He points to a mold in the darkened museum. "A work of art." For nearly 40 years DiCristofaro has been looking for a permanent home for his sprawling collection. Two unlikely institutions - the City of Harrisonburg and James Madison University, both in Virginia - are interested in the old machines, gem stones and tools, he says. They envision a museum in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, some 540 miles from Providence. DiCristofaro would like the collection to stay local. After all, he says, Providence was the epicenter of the early jewelry industry. In 1794, Seril Dodge opened a jewelry store on North Main Street in Providence. And Nehemiah Dodge developed a process for coating lesser metals with gold and silver. Historians say they two men started Rhode Island's jewelry industry. By 1890, there were more than 200 firms with almost 7,000 workers in Providence. A demand for inexpensive jewelry and a growing immigrant labor force fueled that growth for another 100 years. "It was an immigrant business," says DiCristofaro, one where Jewish merchants worked with Italian designers. "They worked hard, they were talented and they were ahead of the curve." By the 1960s, trade magazines were calling Providence "the jewelry capital of the world." "You had the counterculture, birth control - and pierced earrings," DiCristofaro says. "In the '70s you had disco jewelry and in the '80s you had big hair and big jewelry." It did not last. Foreign companies used cheap labor to compete with local companies. And fashions changed. Many Rhode Island companies went out of business from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. As as a broker and workout specialist, DiCristofaro picked up the pieces. He represented more than 100 troubled companies and collected jewelry, machines and other items in the process. "We were earning money for banks and breaking up factories," he says. "We were building a business off the body parts of other businesses." Companies are still making jewelry in Rhode Island - look at Alex and Ani - but now they are selling brands rather than lines, he says. DiCristofaro opened the museum in 1983. Since then, he has considered a number of locations for his museum: an elementary school, the Convention Center and the failed Heritage Harbor Museum. Now in his early 60s, he is not sure how much longer he will run the museum. Still, he can not let go of the past. In the 1970s, he went to the University of Rhode Island to become a pharmacist. In the summers he worked with an uncle, the owner of Salvadore Toll Co. He switched career paths. "I loved jewelry." An uncle showed him how to make molds. "Someone's going to want to know this in the future," his uncle told him.
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Jewelry Industry
Seril Dodge and his nephew Nehemiah Dodge started the manufacture of jewelry in Providence in 1794, and jewelry was once the primary industry in Rhode Island. The industry grew slowly during the early 19th century, then more rapidly. Jewelry making and silverware attracted both American and foreign craftsmen to the city as the industry grew in prominence. By 1850, there were 57 firms and 590 workers in the jewelry trade. By 1880, Rhode Island led the United States in the manufacture of jewelry, accounting for more than one quarter of the entire national jewelry production. By 1890, there were more than 200 firms with almost 7,000 workers in Providence. By the 1960s, jewelry trade magazines referred to Providence as "the jewelry capital of the world." The industry peaked in 1978 with 32,500 workers, then began a swift decline. By 1996, the number of jewelry workers shrank to 13,500. Numerous former factories were left vacant in the jewelry district, and many of them became offices, residences, restaurants, bars, and nightclubs.