Jewelry

Jewelry designer Ann King was beginning to make a name for herself back in the early 1980s when she met fellow Philadelphia designer Steven Lagos at the Jewelers of America International Trade Show in New York. Over the next few years, the two merged their professional and personal lives under the Lagos banner. Lagos jewelry produced in Philadelphia became a luxury brand in demand in upscale stores across the country. When the couple married in 1987, Ann King became Ann Lagos. But on Monday night, Ann King will be reborn when QVC, the West Chester-based electronic retailer, introduces a line of designer jewelry - the Ann King Collection.

It took four minutes for Stefanie to die. And if what prosecutors say is true - that her husband was the one who killed her - what was he thinking as he tightened his hands around her throat, squeezing the life out of her? Were his thoughts on Summer, the blonde dancer with the beautiful body at Delilah's Den who had become his afternoon obsession? During those four minutes, as his wife desperately gasped for breath, was Craig Rabinowitz thinking about the life insurance policies he had just taken out on her, the policies with the $1.5 million payoff that could get him out of debt?

A day after he cradled the body of his strangled wife in the lukewarm water of her bathtub, Craig Rabinowitz expressed his grief in a rather peculiar fashion. He pawned her engagement ring. And the rest of her jewelry, too. It was almost as inexplicable as the phone call the seemingly happily married family man received at home on his cell phone from his fantasy woman, a topless dancer, late at night on April 29. Ninety minutes later, Stefanie Rabinowitz was dead.

Jewelry can be bought in many places - everywhere you go it seems someone is selling it. But getting it repaired is something else. Most jewelry stores can have your bracelet, necklace or ring repaired, but many of them send the work out. A few jewelers do their own repairs. Most of them also make jewelry from their own custom designs. In the appliance business, the customer has to pay for the estimate whether or not the appliance is repaired. However, jewelry-repair estimates are free.

It wasn't so long ago that art and craft were two distinct arenas, but today it's getting harder and harder to tell the pure art-makers from the people interested in combining beauty with utility. In ceramics, glass, fiber, metal and even in furniture, one finds abundant evidence that many craft-oriented artists aspire to what they consider a higher calling. And now, believe it or not, that trend is being expressed in jewelry, which on its face wouldn't appear to be a likely candidate for canonization as high art. That's true if one is talking about conventional jewelry fabricated by people trained in metalsmithing and gemology.

The glitter of the gold chains around the neck of the passer-by caught drug addict Matthew Slaughter's eye in 1990, the prosecutor said. "Look at that dude," Slaughter, 22, a street vendor, allegedly told two friends as Tommie Teagues, 22, passed the corner of 17th and Jefferson streets at 7:45 p.m. on June 7. "If I had a gun, I'd take that jewelry," Slaughter commented, Assistant District Attorney Richard Carroll said last Friday. Slaughter, of Lambert Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue, then borrowed a gun from one of the friends and shot and killed Teagues, Carroll said.

A Warwick Hotel resident is suing management because the family jewels are missing. In a suit filed in Common Pleas Court, Susan Shore said she left several bags with a doorman while she parked her car on March 27, just as she had done for the last 19 years. When she returned, a bellman carried the bags to her apartment - same as always. Only when the luggage arrived at Shore's apartment this time, the Louis Vuitton bag containing $29,130 worth of her late mother's jewelry was gone.

Freeman's will wind out the year with a two-day holiday sale of jewelry, silver and objets d'art. It is one of several auctions in the days before Christmas featuring items suitable for gifts. The first session, beginning at 1 p.m. tomorrow, at Freeman's gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. will be devoted to 240 lots of jewelry. At least five of them are expected to sell for five-figure prices, including a pair of art-deco diamond and platinum clips with an estimate of $25,000 to $30,000, according to the $25 catalog.

FORMER Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos, who made headlines for her vast shoe collection, is embarking on a new project - a fashion line. The 77-year-old widow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos told reporters yesterday she planned to launch "The Imelda Collection" of fashion jewelry and accessories on Nov. 18. Marcos became notorious for her shopping trips to New York while her country wallowed in poverty under martial law declared by her...

The discovery of poor quality diamonds in a shark-shaped pin commissioned by Greg Norman disappointed him and gave his wife an emotional shock, the golfer testified at his former jeweler's fraud trial in Miami. "There was a huge change in the emotional feeling of my wife," said Norman, who gave the $48,875 pin shaped like his company logo to his wife Laura as a gift in 1996. "She didn't want to continue to wear it. " The two-time British Open champion and winner of 74 tournaments was the first witness in the trial yesterday of Jack Hasson, who is charged with fleecing customers out of $80 million in fraudulent jewelry sales.

Mother Mary and bed linens have a long and storied history. You may recall that a few years ago, she refused to use the sheets that Brother Frank bought her, because there were bats printed on the fitted sheet and a life-size Batman on the flat sheet. Mother Mary couldn't picture Batman lying on top of her. Neither can I. Visualize among yourselves. Frank had gotten the sheets because they were on sale, which gives you an idea of how the Flying Scottolines roll.

It's hard to imagine that the graceful, understated jewelry that Anna Bario and Page Neal fabricate was once produced in a tiny, grimy studio at Ninth and Spring Garden. "When we see customers who knew us then, it's like seeing your family?…," says Bario. "?‘I was 25 and working in a dirty studio across from a pistol range, and somehow you believed in us.'?" Now, the duo craft their wares in a sunny Queen Village shop with gray-painted hardwood floors and a pressed-tin ceiling — more apropos of their personal and professional aesthetic.

NORFOLK, VA. - Seven people have been charged with operating a jewelry-theft ring based in Richmond, Va., that authorities say stole more than $4.6 million in merchandise from traveling salesmen in Virginia and several other states. Those charged had initial court appearances in federal court in Newport News, Va., on Tuesday. U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said the group is part of an international criminal organization that committed 17 robberies, primarily by attacking sales representatives and couriers after they had returned to their homes or hotel rooms.

  A wildlife camera helped to capture a serial burglar whose three-month crime spree victimized 13 homeowners in three Chester County townships, District Attorney Tom Hogan said Tuesday. Larry Samuel, also known as Elijah Samuel, 32, of Coatesville, is accused of committing the crimes in East Fallowfield, Valley, and Sadsbury Townships from Oct. 27 through Feb. 1, Hogan said. The stolen items were electronics, jewelry, and 10 firearms, including semiautomatic weapons. "He targeted homes around where he lived," Hogan said.

Two pearl necklaces passed down from her grandmother. Two diamond rings set in platinum. A platinum, sapphire, and diamond pin from her mother. The 67-year-old Evesham grandmother said she kept the heirlooms in a silk pouch in a nightstand drawer and discovered in February they were missing. She reported to police that the items were among more than a dozen pieces stolen that were 25 to 70 years old and valued at $81,000. Eight days later, $25,000 worth of jewelry was reported stolen from another Evesham home.

Forty-five seconds is all it took for three masked, gun-toting men to rob a jewelry store in Evesham Township, N.J., of $450,000 worth of jewelry Thursday night, police said. The men entered the Jay Roberts Jewelry store on Route 73, and announced the robbery around 7:45 p.m., police said. They ordered employees to the ground, and one man used a hammer to smash glass display cases. He stuffed watches and other items into a white cloth bag while his accomplices stood by, police said.

Perhaps alchemist is the best word for artist, writer, and musician Paul Evans Pedersen Jr. After all, this is a man who digs up discarded chunks of vintage South Jersey glass and transforms them into "Pine Barrens Diamonds. " Pieces of jewelry featuring his man-made gems will be displayed next Sunday at Lines on the Pines, an artists' showcase in Hammonton. The annual event features about 50 local residents, working in a variety of media, who are inspired by the distinctive history, landscape, and culture of the Pinelands.

A group of armed men broke into the Bernie Robbins Fine Jewelry inside the Radnor Hotel in daylight, and stole an undetermined amount of jewelry. Radnor Township Police say the heist on Lancaster Ave. in St. Davids took place 4:40 p.m. Wednesday when four to six men entered the store. Police say the men were armed. They smashed out several jewelry cases before stealing the content. All the suspects appeared to be black males, and all but one wore some type of covering over the lower part of their faces, police said.

Former Urban Outfitters Inc. chief executive Glen T. Senk, whose departure rattled investors and battered the Philadelphia-based retailer's stock price after it was announced Tuesday, was named CEO of David Yurman Inc. on Wednesday, the upscale New York-based jeweler announced. Senk, 55, is set to join the privately owned jeweler Feb. 27 and will take an ownership stake in the company, founders David and Sybil Yurman said in a statement. Word of Senk's new job spread across an anxious shareholder community as Urban's shares fell 18.63 percent Wednesday, to close at $23.93, in advance of a highly anticipated presentation by company officials to institutional investors Thursday at a conference in Miami.

For an iconic American department store or the small jewelry shop owned by an immigrant family two blocks away, this was not a good week for retail along 69th Street in Upper Darby. Sears Holdings Corp. said Tuesday that it would close up to 120 stores nationwide and said Thursday that the branch at 150 S. 69th St. was among them. The Pottstown Sears store is also closing. "Poor performance," Sears spokeswoman Kim Freely said of all locations chosen, without details, including when doors would shut for good.