Historic Charlotte

✧
PERRY’S FINE,
ANTIQUE &
ESTATE JEWELRY
Ernest and Priscilla Perry
HISTORIC CHARLOTTE
142
“It never ceases to amaze me what people
have in their safety deposit boxes or jewelry
cases,” says Ernest Perry. For more than twenty
years, Perry and his wife Priscilla have come
across thousands of curious treasures which
they pass on to the public at Perry’s Fine,
Antique & Estate Jewelry in SouthPark.
Intriguing stories often accompany the
acquisition of the estate jewelry. One such
story is the “Tale of the Potato Brooch.” The
story’s beginning takes place in the late 1940s,
when a woman was killed in a tragic plane
crash. Her family searched for her cherished
diamond brooch after her death but couldn’t
find it. Eventually, everyone quit looking and
forgot about it.
Weeks later, while she was cleaning her
mother’s house, the daughter came across a
bag of potatoes sprouting in the pantry. As she
carried the bag to the trash, she felt something
hard at the bottom of the bag. Further
investigation revealed that it was the diamond
brooch. The mother had hidden it in the
potatoes for safekeeping. The daughter almost
threw it out!
Eventually, the brooch was sold and the
tale was passed along with it.
Perry’s at SouthPark has noticed through the
years that the stories which accompany some of
the antique and estate jewelry interest the
buyers almost as much as the pieces themselves.
Ernest Perry went into business for himself
in 1977 after having worked for a national
chain for twelve years. He and Priscilla traveled
across North Carolina, buying and trading
estate jewelry. In time, Ernest and Priscilla
accumulated fifty coffee cans full of unusual
and unique jewelry which were too interesting
to relegate to the scrap gold heap, despite the
fact that the price of gold was unusually high at
the time. Instead, they opened a jewelry store,
convinced there was a market for such unusual
treasures. Their hunch paid off; the public’s
interest in unusual antique and estate jewelry
far exceeded their expectations.
Perry’s at SouthPark greeted the new
millennium and its twentieth year in business
with a major store renovation and an
expansion to twenty-six hundred square feet.
In keeping with its tradition of mixing old with
new, Perry’s kept its magnificent century-old
wooden showcases.
The massive oak and mahogany cases (two
of which measure over twelve feet in length)
are themselves curiosities. Manufactured by
Wade Manufacturing Company of Charlotte in
the early 1900s, a few of the cases are actually
signed by the craftsmen who built them.
The cases debuted in the old Van Sleen
Jewelry Store in Gastonia, reportedly delivered
there by mule train. When Van Sleen’s was
sold, Ernest Perry recognized their value and
bought them to use in his own store. The cases
require precision balancing in order for their
special pressure-sprung latches to work
properly, but the extra effort is more than offset
by the cases’ aesthetic and historical value.
Estate jewelry is previously-owned jewelry,
according to Ernest Perry, and antique jewelry
is usually at least one hundred years old,
although the term often describes any jewelry
which was made before World War II. Perry’s
at SouthPark’s impressive collection of fine,
estate and antique jewelry includes necklaces,
brooches of diamonds and precious gems,
scatter pins (which were popular in the
1950s), and all kinds and sizes of watches,
many of which are collectible.
Perry says the oldest piece of jewelry to find
its way to his store was a diamond, pearl, and
emerald necklace that had belonged to the
daughter of a Russian czar. Industrialist