GENERATIONAL GEMS

Transforming heirloom jewelry helps keep sentimental memories alive

By Abigail Preiszig

The year 2024 began as a whirlwind of bittersweet emotions for Harley Frederick.

The month before her April wedding, the family moved her grandmother, a long-term Beachwood resident, out of her home and into a nursing home due to a significant decline in her health.
“It was just a sentimental time in my life,” says Frederick, eight months pregnant with her first child at the time of her interview with Celebrations.

Her grandmother, Carolyn Schoen, 85, “was always a fashionista, and jewelry was her thing,” Frederick says. Schoen, who is safe and healthy in her new home, was never one to “even entertain costume jewelry” and over the course of her life handed down chunky, gold pieces to Frederick and her sister.
Schoen’s jewelry didn’t quite fit the minimalist style of Frederick, 30, she says. To repurpose the pieces and always have a piece of her grandmother with her, she brought the items to Megan Piccione, owner of Megan Piccione High Jewelry.
“(Piccione) had ideas based on what she knew I liked, I had some ideas, and we put them together and within not even 20 minutes we were like, okay this is what we’re going to do,” says Frederick, a Twinsburg resident.
Piccione, a third-generation jeweler specializing in custom bridal and fashion jewelry, has transformed dozens of heirloom pieces since opening her Beachwood boutique in December 2023.
With these intergenerational items she has created wearable mementos to commemorate milestones like weddings and b’nai mitzvahs. Hearing the stories behind the pieces, including rings, brooches and necklaces, lends itself to a special process, says Piccione, a congregant of Congregation Mishkan Or in Beachwood.

“… Especially being the descendant of Holocaust survivors, knowing that the story can be taken back from a century or generations ago, those are really special stories to hear about,” she says. “I understand the value of some of the pieces that have survived the tragedies because we have one ring that is my great-great-grandmother’s and that is the only piece of jewelry that we have, the only piece of anything we have … that is so special to us because we know what it survived.”
Some customers “love the idea of having the item just be restored to be in its original style,” Piccione says.
The most meaningful reaction Piccione received was from a client who restored her recently deceased mother’s diamond cocktail ring, she recalls.
“The prongs were broken, they were bent – she couldn’t wear it and know that the diamonds would be safe in it,” says Piccione, a Beachwood resident. “So, we took the ring, we remounted it into the same design that she had. We presented it to her maybe two to three weeks later, keep in mind the mother passed about two years prior, and she just burst into tears when she saw it.”
Other customers create new pieces with multiple their heirloom jewelry, says Piccione who completed a project with up to 32-pieces of jewelry.
She recalls a grandmother brought in an heirloom brooch and other pieces made of sapphires and diamonds to create pendants to be put on necklaces for her grandchildren’s b’nai mitzvahs.
“We made (a) beautiful 18 karat flower pendant with maybe six different sapphires and a diamond in the center, and then a teardrop sapphire pendant with some diamonds going around it,” she says. “That was a hit, it was something that was passed down from a great-grandparent at that point to a b’nai mitzvah. It was very special.”
The first and most important step in transforming heirloom jewelry is consultation and examination, she says.
The piece is examined in-house to ensure it can withstand the transformation, including removing stones out of prongs and determining the gold is without any porosity, or solid enough to work with, Piccione says. From there, they work on design.
“We’ll start out with a sketch on paper, or we’ll ask the client about their ideas or their inspiration, sometimes we ask them to bring in photos of something that they would like to use, and if not, then we start sketching.,” she says. “Then, we’ll make something on the CAD system, which is the computer animated design.”
After the client approves the rendering, Piccione begins casting and completes the project in an average of two weeks, she says.
“We do the 3D printing, casting, set work and it’s completely finished in house,” Piccione says.
The current trend is daintier jewelry “rather than their old clunky stuff that their family used to have,” she says.
“There have been brides that come in that don’t have their grandparents anymore and they wish that they had them at their wedding,” Piccione says. “In an effort to have their spirit there, they’ll bring in some of their jewelry and ask to have it transformed into something that goes with their style of the wedding. … That’s a very unique way just to honor the grandparent, not only to have them walk down the aisle with them, but to wear something that was theirs and have it match more of their style.”
Frederick did not know what to do with her grandmother’s necklaces, bracelets and rings but wanted to hold onto the sentimental value behind them with versatile items that could be layered with other pieces and worn every day, says Frederick, who has been friends with Piccione since they were freshmen at Beachwood High School.
Piccione paid Frederick for the gold and used the credit to restore the diamonds – clean and polish them – and put them into a much trendier piece, Piccione says.
“She actually made a very cool necklace that was called a ‘Diamonds by the Inch,’ where there’s a single diamond going around each inch of the chain and it’s something she wears every day,” she says.
Piccione was proficient in working with her budget and style, making it straightforward and special, Frederick says.
“Megan makes the process so simple and so easy, and she provides so many options,” Frederick says. “Not only is it an easy process, but she makes it feasible for whomever the person is. …She always is very accommodating and makes you feel at peace with what you’re creating. Whether it’s something from an heirloom or whether it’s something brand new.”