Silver Mine

Amy Milner was at loose ends career-wise when she rummaged through her grandmother’s garage for the equivalent of the family silver--thousands of molds from the jewelry line Guglielmo Cini started in the 1920s. “Grandpa designed about 12 different sets of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings and pendants each year for about 60 years,” Milner says. Cini had studied jewelry-making as a boy in Florence, Italy, built the business in Boston and, in the ‘50s, moved it to Laguna Beach. But the line died a few years after his death in 1979. While the original sterling pieces gain value as collectibles, Milner’s reissues--$60 to $460--fill display cases in high-end outfits such as Nordstrom and Las Vegas’ new Bellagio. Cini would have loved the hotel, his granddaughter says, because he admired “the big, the bold and the elegant.” So do such Cini fans as Stevie Nicks, Tommy Lee, Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. People “seem to really get lost in buying this stuff,” says Teri Villalobos, a fashion jewelry buyer at Nordstrom. “It’s almost cultish.”