Christmas Village vendors: Thomas Laraia follows in his mom's footsteps selling handmade silver jewelry

Self-taught silversmith Thomas Laraia followed in his mom's jewelry-making footsteps, and his second-generation artistry has been on display at the Christmas Village for nearly a decade. 

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• This series highlights merchants at the Christmas Village in LOVE Park. A new Q&A ran each day last week.

Laraia, who's originally from New York City and now lives in Princeton, operates the jewelry brand Tommy Conch — which he jokingly refers to as his "stage name." Through Dec. 24, Laraia can be found at Christmas Village booth No. 32 selling handmade sterling silver rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets. 

We stopped by his booth to admire the rows of rings while also hearing about Laraia's jewelry journey:

PHILLYVOICE: How long have you been doing this?

THOMAS LARAIA: I grew up in a jewelry family. I have a mother who started a jewelry business back in the late '60s. She is 99 years old and still hanging around. She was a big jewelry designer in New York City, and so it kind of ran into the family through the DNA, through the bloodline. And I picked it up. I started dabbling in it many, many years ago in the '70s, '80s. And it just evolved to the point where I'm like, You know what? Why not? Why not jewelry?

PV: Can you tell me more about your mother's work in the industry?

LARAIA: My mom was a jewelry designer back in the 1940s in New York City for a company called Henri Bendel, which was like a little mini version of a Macy's but a prestigious high-end department store. ... So my mom designed, and then she branched out, many years later and opened up 25 jewelry stores. ... It was called Village Silver and was in seven different states, and we specialized in just handcrafted sterling silver. 

Before there were malls or the internet, where do people shop? They shop on Main Street. Every Main Street had the baker, the butcher, the cobbler, the jeweler. But every jeweler didn't sell silver. Every jeweler was selling what was called traditional jewelry, so they were selling gold, diamonds and watches. 

So my mom in the late '60s now, Woodstock era hippies wanted to buy silver bangles. And my mom's like, 'God, nobody's selling silver.' So she decided to try it out, and she opened up one store selling handcrafted silver by artists. And then she had two stores, and then five stores, and then 20 stores.

PV: For your company, where did the Tommy Conch name come from?

LARAIA: So the reason why my company name is Conch is when I was living on a beach in Connecticut about 20, 25 years ago, and I started to design and make a lot of jewelry that was more beachy, nautical themed. And I'm like, wow I kind of like these, sea glass and shells. And my original business model was to supply my designs to resort towns, like shops on the Jersey Shore, maybe on Long Island, New York. So I thought, well, I'm making nautical jewelry, maybe I should have a nautical name that matches the theme of the jewelry. 

So my first name is Tom, and I was like, Tommy the oyster? No. One day Tommy Conch came to me and I'm like, yeah! When I was doing some of the nautical pieces, that was what kind of started me, but then I evolved from there. But sea glass that people find on the beach, to incorporate that into jewelry is still just a great idea and a really big seller. 

PV: What are some of your favorite things you're selling?

LARAIA: A lot of these stone rings I like. I like to use a lot of semiprecious stones, stones like peridots and garnets. A lot of the birth stones are really popular. ... Silver is a white metal, so it's a neutral color metal, whereas gold is a yellow metal. ... Anything against white tends to always look OK because it becomes the neutral background. So a lot of stones set against silver just really look great.

PV: What's the best part of being at the Christmas Village?

LARAIA: What's really, really great is this is year eight or nine for me and every year I get more and more repeat business. People come in, and I recognize a lot and that's really rewarding because they're coming back, so they had a good experience. Whatever they bought, even for themselves or as a gift, worked out well and they're buying more. So I like that.