Collaboration spurs next generation of designers

CROWN JEWEL: Rhode Island College student John Deignan works on jewelry design. The school's jewelry-design program is one of two offered in the state. / COURTESY RIC
CROWN JEWEL: Rhode Island College student John Deignan works on jewelry design. The school's jewelry-design program is one of two offered in the state. / COURTESY RIC

The Ocean State jewelry industry today is a shadow of what it looked like in its heyday, but Rhode Island College and some local businesses are collaborating to keep the craft alive.

The school’s undergraduate jewelry-design program is just one of two jewelry programs offered in Rhode Island and although modest in size, comprising 14 majors and 30 total students who take the course, it packs a big punch.

Indeed, each spring students participating in the program compete in the New England chapter of the International Precious Metals Institute. They have consistently won multiple awards since 2011. This year RIC student Jennifer Roderick came in first place, winning $5,000.

“They’ve been doing amazingly well,” said RIC President Nancy E. Carriuolo. “We’ve won so many of these prizes.”

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The local talent hasn’t been lost on jewelry companies who are contributing to the effort of keeping the craft relevant in Rhode Island and local education. Jewelry giant Alex and Ani LLC in 2012 donated $1 million to Rhode Island College’s new $17 million art center, which is home to the jewelry program. Alex and Ani also recently donated a 3-D printer for students to create molds.

“I think that Alex and Ani has been able to bring back jewelry manufacturing to Rhode Island,” Carriuolo said.

Carriuolo, a self-proclaimed lover of the arts and jewelry, has a special connection to Rhode Island jewelry. An upstate New York native, she remembers a former boyfriend bringing her back a piece of jewelry from vacation in Rhode Island.

“Providence was the jewelry capital of the world,” Carriuolo said.

Indeed, in the 1890s the Rhode Island jewelry industry, fueled by an expansion of inexpensive jewelry, immigrants fueling a growing labor force and the process of mechanization, totaled more than 200 firms comprising about 7,000 works, according to the Providence Jewelry District Association.

The industry exploded into the 20th century and jewelry and silverware manufacturing employment reached 33,874 jobs at its peak in 1978, accounting for 25.2 percent of the state’s manufacturing employment and 10.1 percent of its private-sector jobs, according to the R.I. Department of Labor and Training.

But the decline from 1978 has been nothing short of dramatic.

The DLT in 2014 reported an annualized average of 3,424 workers in the jewelry and silverware manufacturing industry, accounting for 8.4 percent of the state’s total manufacturing employment and .8 percent of the state’s private-sector workforce.

“The jewelry and silverware manufacturing industry employment peaked in 1978 and has experienced a steady decline since,” the department’s Labor Market Information division reports. “Between 1978 and 2014, the industry lost 90 percent of its employment with the loss of 30,450 jobs.”

But there’s still life in the jewelry industry as local companies, such as Alex and Ani and the jewelry retail store Providence Diamond Co., want to see them once again flourish.

Daniel K. Pritsker, vice president at Providence Diamond Co., likes what Rhode Island College is doing, because he’s spent his entire life around the business of buying and selling high-end jewelry and the industry just never knows where and when the next big piece of jewelry design will emerge,” he said.

“It’s not the easiest thing in the world to be a jewelry designer,” Pritsker said. “The next great thing could pop up out of anywhere. I’ve seen it happen.”

Pritsker this spring toured the jewelry-making program at Rhode Island College. Carriuolo had invited him to the school to see if Providence Diamond would be interested in partnering with the program in some capacity. After the visit, Pritsker not only offered a donation through Providence Diamond, but he also offered the program boxes of unused precious and semi-precious gemstones that the company had accumulated over the years from breaking down used jewelry.

The school, in turn, has named one of its classrooms after the company.

“The collaboration is great because we’re all Rhode Islanders and this supports the local economy,” Pritsker said. “It’s something bigger companies, that don’t have a foothold in Rhode Island, might not do.”

Carriuolo attributes a lot of the students’ successes to associate professor Dianne Reilly, who runs the program. Carriuolo says this is the type of higher education-to-local-businesses connection that Gov. Gina M. Raimondo has been pushing toward in her agenda to bolster local economies, especially since so many RIC graduates stay and seek work in Rhode Island.

“There are almost 40,000 Rhode Island College alumni that are living and working in Rhode Island,” Carriuolo said. “If our students can find a job locally, they will” choose that option. •

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