Golconda Jewellery: A Family Tradition to Live Up To

When Rosalinda Linda Picardal-Caragos set up her pawnshop business in 1988, she didn't realize at the time it would eventually evolve into an enterprise that would showcase her family's love affair with and tradition of fine jewelry.

"I put up the business as a hedge against my husband's impending retirement from his job at the bank," she recalls. "Fortunately, the bank where he worked allowed us to rent a small space in their building which gave us a very favorable location right in the middle of the Plaza Divisoria commercial district."

Originally conceived as a credit, lending and pawnshop enterprise, Rosalinda's eventually found itself accepting orders for small custom-made jewelry from its regular clients who regularly patronized the store's rematado sales.

"After two years, we found ourselves with quite an inventory of rematado jewelry," Ms. Caragos said. "With the help of my brother Miguel, Jr., we went into custom made jewelry mostly for friends who initially came to view our rematado sales and eventually ended up having their purchases custom-made to suit their individual tastes and style."

The younger Picardal had previously studied jewelry making with the Technology & Livelihood Resource Center (TLRC) then spent some time honing his craft with the famed jewelry makers of Meycauayan, Bulacan as his wife Cherry Medenilla is a sister of the owners of the famed Solid Gold and La Consolacion jewelry shops from that place.

The family's fondness for fine jewelry began when Dr. Jose Marfori of Nasugbu, Batangas came over during the early 1900s to accept a government posting as the first health officer of Cagayan de Misamis, as Cagayan de Oro was then known. When he visited his patients in the highlands of Bukidnon, the good doctor would often come home laden with chickens, an occasional cattle and gold nuggets given to him as payment for his services by the lumads.

Eventually, Dr. Marfori managed to purchase a ranch in the Gango Plain in Bukidnon where he raised some 300 head of cattle and did some gold panning on the side at a nearby waterfall. He brought his gold nuggets to Ms. Caragos' great great grand father Ramon Momong Neri who was one of the first jewelers in the Segundo Partido de Misamis. His wife Mameng was forever advising her children and grandchildren to invest in jewelry so they would never go hungry.

"During the Second World War, she told us how she bartered her jarful of jewelries for food and at a time when famine was staring everyone in the face, her family never went hungry," Ms. Caragos said. "One gold earring at that time would purchase one sack of rice."

Even before she started Rosalinda's, Ms. Caragos was already designing her own jewelry. When a friend became enamored with one of her creations, she simply sold it and made new ones for herself.

"My sister Teresa, who was an international flight stewardess with Philippine Airlines (and is still there but is now an international purser) kept a store of imported items along Real Street (now Gen. Nicolas Capistrano) in front of the present Phil. Women's University annex building. She would regularly bring me catalogs of jewelry from where I drew the inspiration from my designs."

Although her husband, banker Salvador "Doring" Caragos was already receiving a respectable monthly salary for 1965 of P400 as a bank cashier, Ms. Caragos, a magna cum laude graduate in management from the University of San Carlos in Cebu, still saw the need to augment the family's income by buying and selling jewelries among her friends.

By the year 2000, she felt confident enough to register Golconda Jewelry (from a town in India famed for its gemstones) as a separate business from Rosalinda's .

"Purely through word-of-mouth, we were getting customers for our jewelry from as far as Valencia, Butuan, Iligan, Ozamiz, Cebu and Manila," Ms. Caragos said. "Many of these were couples of mixed nationalities ordering wedding rings."

The Golconda line of jewelry features the four classic precious stones of the nobility: diamonds, blue sapphires, rubies and emeralds set in 14K gold. It also has special collections such as the Bridal Collection which includes matching engagement and wedding rings, arrhae, kiara and bridal jewelry, and the Antigo line of traditional antique designs such as the colonial period "tambourine" based on a design by her great, great grandfather Momong Neri which includes golden filigreed medallion on a lacy cross with alfajor, earrings, pineta, the old rich favorite pre-colonial 'pipa', suso, and 'uod' designs which captured the whims of the Old World and recently discovered in antique diggings in Butuan.

Golconda also makes an affordable Teens Collection for trendy teeners (the Y necklace, simply gold bracelets with charms, and pearl and diamond stud earrings), Chinese traditional line with conversational pieces intended to spark business opportunities such as the pinky gold nail, and men's line for the so-called metrosexuals who don't subscribe to traditional mores of masculinity and think nothing of wearing birth stones, gold barabadas bracelets and chains, horseshoe or domino rings and Rolex design bracelets.

Despite the influx of cheap, machine made jewelries from Hong Kong and Bangkok, Ms. Caragos still believes there's always be a market for hand-made, custom jewelry crafted by master jewelers such as the three craftsmen from Meycauayan, Bulacan who now execute the designs for Golconda under her supervision.

Her daughter Honey has also designed a website for Golconda (www.golcondajewels.com) which has become her 'secret weapon' to level the playing field with bigger players from abroad.

"With our website, our sukis can now view our latest creations online and place their orders by email, although most of our customers are still from around here," she said.

Just last December, she had no less than 15 couples of mixed marriages who ordered their bridal collections from Golconda.

With her children now leading their own lives and hubby Doring soon to oversee operations after a second "retirement" from banking, Ms. Caragos has all she needs to indulge in her passion for collecting antiques. She's had quite a few unusual experiences in the course of her foraging expeditions around the region, but that's another story for another day.

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