Thirty years ago, Temple St. Clair came to jewelry design serendipitously. She was a student in Florence, Italy, when her mother paid her a visit—she'd flown in from their hometown of Roanoke, Virginia—and asked to have an ancient coin set in a necklace. St. Clair, on a mission to find the perfect craftsman for the job, hit the Florentine streets. She tracked down a goldsmith, and that was her first introduction into the jewelry world. Before long, she was selling pieces to acquaintances, and in 1986, she made her debut at Barneys, becoming the first fine jeweler the department store had ever carried.

While the New York Times recently reported on the lack of jewelers left in Florence and the historic Ponte Vecchio (above), St. Clair continues to work with some of the same circles of craftspeople and artisans she met over 30 years ago—including the Florentine Jewelers Guild."Barneys didn’t even have a jewelry department," she says. "I came to New York and showed them a few things that I was doing, and that was the beginning of their jewelry department," she says.