About Us

Along the Cayuga Lake inlet, a dragonfly with a ten-foot wingspan alights on the roof of a square building. On rare, magical sunny days in Upstate New York, its wings are iridescent, shimmering with hints of peridot, ruby, and aquamarine: clues to the contents of the building on which the dragonfly is perched.

The story of this local landmark, poised atop an Ithaca institution, is the story of the Jewelbox, its founder Micky Roof, and the lives of thousands of people touched by the Jewelbox’s unique vision.

Micky Roof’s interest in jewelry didn’t begin in a showroom. It started in her parents’ machine factory in Newark. It started in the garage, helping her older brother fix up old cars. In her early experiences with metals, Micky came to understand creation and repair as collaborative processes. In high school, when a jewelry teacher took Micky under his wing, she had no idea jewelry making was something you could do as a job, but soon she was selling her handmade creations at craft fairs. Eventually, Micky and her baby daughter settled in Sayre, Pennsylvania, opening her first retail gallery in an old train station in 1979. A chance meeting with an Ithaca native encouraged her to try her luck in the Finger Lakes. On her first venture to the region, Micky sold out all of the stock she’d brought. She read it as a sign, and with stores already running in Sayre and Elmira, she opened her third retail gallery in Ithaca in 1983.

Since settling in Ithaca full-time, Micky Roof has become a vital part of the community. She’s been a key contributor to the development of the Cayuga Waterfront Trail, and with the Jewelbox’s iconic roof sculpture and immaculate flower beds, the store regularly catches the eye and attention of both tourists and locals.

At the same time, the region has deeply influenced her work. Micky’s Heart of the Finger Lakes charm and Starry Night Over Taughannock Falls designs have become celebrated talismans of the region’s distinctive geography: a lifelong reminder for travelers, and a little piece of home for Ithaca natives to carry with them into the world. The shapes and textures of local flora and fauna regularly find their way into her work, creating a fusion of artist and environment.

With the Jewelbox, a lifetime of passion and skill has converged. The Jewelbox goes beyond a retail gallery, offering myriad services and custom work to create lifelong relationships with their customers. They showcase work by some of the finest jewelry designers, expanding the global community of jewelers and lapidary artists to give you access to some of the most unique designs in the world.

The Jewelbox is a part of the Finger Lakes community, and is a community unto itself. Staffed by a dynamic team of goldsmiths, jewelers, and support staff, the Jewelbox also ties together the lives and generational stories of thousands of pieces of jewelry and their owners, who come back to us again and again to keep their most treasured items shining for years to come.

 

Visit Us / Schedule an Appointment →

Browse Our Catalog → Collections: Micky Roof → Collections: Other Artists →