Tucked along a side street, dwarfed by a mill building next door, reads a sign, faded by time: “Wolf E. Myrow Inc./Stones and findings for the jewelry trade.” Ascend the plain concrete stairs, and inside, there is a hidden gem. Or rather, millions of hidden gems.
The Wolf E. Myrow Company is a bulk jewelry supplier based in Providence, Rhode Island. It is the home to a massive trove of beads, crystals, and other jewelry components, and has supplied artists, figure skaters, and even television shows like Downton Abbey with shiny baubles.
Tony Antonelli is the third generation of the Antonelli family to run the company. Here is a conversation with Antonelli, which has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview can be found here.
ISABELLA JIBILIAN: What’s the name of your business and how did it get started?
TONY ANTONELLI: The Wolf E. Myrow Company started way back just after the Second World War. Providence was a very busy jewelry area of the country. There were jewelry companies all over the place, and Wolf had a very good idea. There was always excess and there’s always demand. So he would look around, find places or find people that had excess inventory and resell it back to the other people in the industry for what they needed. [Then] he started to look around for a partner. He found my grandfather.
JIBILIAN: What are some of your memories of this place?
ANTONELLI: A lot of interesting people that have wandered through these aisles. There was a belly dancer, and she would travel around with a ferret in a cage. One day we were at the scales, weighing out some of the beads and the bells she wanted to buy, and something catches my eye. She had a kind of tallish hairdo, and I’m looking and something is moving in her hair, and she had a small snake intertwined in her hair. It poked its head out and I just thought, “I’ve never seen that before.”
JIBILIAN: What are some of the products or art pieces that people make using your stock here?
ANTONELLI: Years ago, we had representatives from the Walt Disney World come in. They were freshening up the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and they needed to freshen up the treasure chests full of jewels. So they said, what do you have that looks gaudy, that looks shiny, that looks like it would be in a pirate’s treasure chest? And they took back hundreds and hundreds of pounds of plastic, clear plastic beads and gold-plated chain and shiny rhinestones.
JIBILIAN: Can you give me an outline of the rise and fall of the jewelry industry in Rhode Island?
ANTONELLI: A lot of the craftsmen from Europe immigrated to the United States and would make fine jewelry. After the Depression, a lot of people couldn’t afford anything pricey. But craftspeople still needed to provide for their family, so they plied their trade with base materials. Instead of gold and silver, they used brass and steel. Instead of accenting with emeralds and rubies and sapphires, they accented with glass, with rhinestones, with plastic. Jewelry boomed in Providence through the ‘40s, the ‘50s, the ‘60s and the ‘70s.
JIBILIAN: What happened to the costume jewelry industry in Rhode Island?
ANTONELLI: Well, unfortunately, manufacturing in China can be done a lot cheaper. The early- to mid-'90s, that’s when it began to really steamroll. Unfortunately, a lot of the jewelry industry that thrived here for decades has withered and is no longer around.
JIBILIAN: What do you think has kept this place alive?
ANTONELLI: Hard work. Also, the fact that we do have such a wide variety of merchandise. If chain isn’t selling very well, maybe glass beads are popular, or maybe charms are popular or maybe bracelets. If you work in jewelry and you work in arts and crafts of designing, there’s something that’s going to catch your eye. It’s all under one roof.
JIBILIAN: How many beads do you think are in this place?
ANTONELLI: OK, a billion. (Laughs) I dare anybody to come count.
