Decorator Carleton Varney says Rosa Estate Jewelry on South Dixie Highway offers plenty of colorful inspiration.
| Special to Palm Beach Daily News
If you are out and about and happen to come across Rosa Estate Jewelry, a gem of a jewelry boutique on South Dixie Highway, you are in for a treat.
Not only will you see beautiful sparklers set with diamonds and pearls inside the velvet-lined cases, but you may also have the pleasure of meeting the co-owners, Bob Hartman and Louis Rosario.
They possess so much knowledge about stones and share a wealth of experience — after all they have been in the antiques and jewelry business a combined 58 years, five of those years in West Palm Beach.
Since I love color, flowers and gemstones often speak to me. The shop at 3723 S. Dixie Highway has flower boxes filled with bougainvillea to greet you at the doorway, which is very appealing.
Inside the blue-walled shop are garnets, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, rubies, opals, tourmalines, jades and many other colored gems. Also on display are watches with brands ranging from Rolex to Tiffany to Cartier, all in pristine condition.
The shop is on the west side of Dixie Highway, a couple of blocks north of Southern Boulevard. I’m sure many Palm Beach residents en route to or from Palm Beach International Airport have made time to visit the shop. Perhaps they want to purchase a cascade of amethyst beads for $3,500 or have had their eye on a diamond-and-tiger-eye brooch for $4,500.
I have had many a client who enjoys a room scheme designed with an eye toward jewelry and gems. I think of the late Pauline Trigère, a fashion designer who also created jewelry and fragrances. Pauline’s tabletops at home always had bowls of jewelry placed in prominent positions. There were no coffee table books to glance at — only jewels, bracelets and strings of pearls, which were all lovely to look at and to touch.
So how might you decorate with jewels? Perhaps you could string a yard of pearls or a gold chain with a pendant around a sculpted bust. You also could decorate a throw cushion with multi-jeweled brooches.
And remember: If you absolutely adore the color of a gemstone, make a note of it. It might be welcome in a room scheme as a wall color, an accent color or in the pattern of draperies or upholstery.
I do hope you visit the Rosa Estate Jewelry, where you might be offered a glass of something as you shop and you’re likely to hear: “I like what I do. I like to drink and talk to people.” That’s the motto of Louis Rosario, Rosa’s namesake. And what a nice sentiment it is.
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Palm Beacher Carleton Varney is president of Dorothy Draper & Co., an international design firm with offices in New York, West Palm Beach, London and White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Visit CarletonVarney.com or email him at [email protected]