The Angela Cummings Story at Roseate Jewelry
This story began in 1968, when a young Austrian-born designer walked into Tiffany & Co. with a compelling sketchbook of nature-inspired designs. We are excited to announce a new chapter as one of the most celebrated jewelry designers of the 20th century launches a collection at Roseate.
PART ONE: THE ARTIST WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING
Angela Cummings was born in Austria in 1944 and educated in art, gemology, and goldsmithing in Italy and Germany. In 1968, at age 23, she moved to New York City and joined Tiffany & Co. as protégé to renowned jewelry designer Donald Claflin. By 1975, she had debuted a collection under her own name—one of only a few Tiffany designers ever to do so.
Her work was celebrated for its graphic, sculptural shapes; mother-of-pearl and stone inlays; and nature-inspired motifs, with pieces ranging from accessible (a $150 seagull brooch) to extraordinary (a $1.5 million geometric necklace with emeralds and diamonds, prices in 1982).
After leaving Tiffany in 1983, Cummings opened the first fine jewelry boutique at Bergdorf Goodman—a 500-square-foot space on the main floor dedicated solely to her designs. Her work soon appeared at Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, and Neiman Marcus.
More than any other inspiration, Angela Cummings loved the ocean. Seahorses. Coral branches. Waves. Seafoam. Shells. This passion she shares with Roseate Jewelry. Both seek to capture the ancient wisdom and movement of the sea in wearable art.
PART TWO: A LEAP INTO INDEPENDENCE
Angela Cummings left Tiffany in 1984 to chart her own creative course. She opened her first independent boutique at Bergdorf Goodman with her husband, Bruce Cummings, a gemologist. It was an act of creative courage.
In independence, she flourished. She expanded her design concepts to tableware and leather accessories. She explored new materials: South Sea cultured pearls, black jade, black opals. She worked increasingly in sterling silver to make her designs more accessible. Her pieces grew more abstract, more fluid, with twisted stems, curled leaves, and movements that wrapped around the neck.
She opened boutiques across America and Japan, collaborated with fashion brands, and designed for QVC to reach a broader audience. After retiring in 2003 and moving to Utah, she seemed to have closed that chapter. But a decade later, pearl specialist Assael convinced her to return for one final collection. Twenty-five pieces featuring her beloved ocean motifs: scallops, seahorses, coral branches, swirls of waves. All showcasing the sustainably farmed South Sea pearls that form the core of Roseate’s jewelry philosophy.
PART THREE: LEARNING FROM LEGENDS
The Roseate story begins with twenty-five years in luxury jewelry, culminating as global Chief Merchandising Officer at Tiffany & Co. Those years provided an education in the creative legacy that designers like Angela Cummings, Elsa Peretti, and Paloma Picasso built. The lesson: innovation matters more than tradition. Comfort and beauty aren’t contradictory. Nature’s forms, fashioned with skill and reverence, create jewelry that carries deeper meaning and richer stories.
But the industry also revealed contradictions. Material supply chains remained obscured from customers. Most jewelry brands stayed quiet about where gemstones originated or how metals were sourced. This seemed fundamentally wrong. Jewelry is an emotional and symbolic purchase, a talisman of celebrated moments in life. The source of materials and the story of creation should matter most, not least.
For these reasons, Roseate was born to chart a different path.
Pearls are the only living gemstones. To this day, they’re cultivated with traditional techniques in remote, wildly beautiful places. Pearls formed the philosophical foundation for Roseate: to modernize pearl jewelry, to show that pearls can span age and gender, expressing wisdom, grace, and beauty unburdened by formality and status.
The journey led to Australia’s northwest coast, sourcing the world’s finest South Sea pearls from silver-lipped oysters the size of salad plates. Four days camping on a Tuamotu Archipelago atoll in French Polynesia with the Kamoka team, watching pearl farmers clean oyster shells by hand in turquoise lagoons. Learning sustainable pearl farming practices that protect marine ecosystems through respect for traditional methods and the pristine water that ocean oysters require to survive.
PART FOUR: WHEN VISIONS ALIGN
Through Angela Cummings’ family, Roseate has been granted the extraordinary privilege of bringing select designs from her independent post-Tiffany period to life. The collection features her beloved ocean motifs: seahorses that curl with sculptural grace, stars that evoke celestial navigation and the night sky reflecting on water.
Seahorses symbolize patience, protection, and persistence. They’re among the ocean’s most magical creatures with unusual and charming habits. Male seahorses carry the young. They mate for life. They navigate currents with balletic elegance. In mythology and symbolism, they represent a note of grace and elegance in the vast oceans.
Stars are primordial guiding lights of the night sky. Throughout our lives, they restore the same wonder as the first moment we saw them. They guide us home. They remind us we’re part of something larger than ourselves.
Roseate’s design collection already celebrates nature with symbolic waterdrops blending to form hearts, with dragonflies and butterflies long cherished as symbols of transformation, good fortune, and healthy environments. With Cummings’ seahorses and stars, we’re expanding that nature-inspired vision, diving deeper into the ocean symbolism that defines both her legacy and our brand.
PART FIVE: THE INVITATION
The Angela Cummings Collection launches soon at roseatejewelry.com.
These designs have waited decades to be realized, preserved by her family and now entrusted to Roseate. We’ve stayed true to her artistic vision while incorporating everything Roseate stands for: sustainable materials, transparent sourcing, ocean conservation, and modern aesthetics unbound from formality.
This is jewelry that connects you with the depths where pearls form slowly, mysteriously, beautifully. Jewelry that connects you with a design legend. Jewelry that connects you with a movement of conscious consumers who view beauty and values as inseparable.
Angela Cummings taught us that nature deserves to be celebrated. At Roseate, we believe it also deserves to be protected.
Welcome to the Angela Cummings Collection. Welcome to the next chapter of a story that’s been unfolding for over fifty years.
