We are Matt and Shauna Breatore, husband and wife team, owners of Pebble & Polish. Welcome to our shop!
Our pieces are unique, cherished items and we strive to maintain a shop intimacy befitting our wares. Pebble & Polish is therefore entirely owner operated and intentionally humble in scale. We do it all! (Or just about, as we do rely on the skills of talented goldsmiths, and a close friend was kind enough to take our couples photos.) As neither of us has family members in the trade, we had to research, study, and navigate our own way into the field. Passion prevails! We may hire things out one day, but for now we live this adventure as a couple, on our own, and the shop is as much an extension of our relationship as it is a means towards a livelihood. We’re just a (fairly) normal couple doing their thing, and we truly appreciate your support!
Pebble & Polish focuses on antique and vintage diamond rings from c. 1850-1950. In addition to the antique, we adore the unique, and we champion the charming as much as the traditionally beautiful. Distinct patinas, pillowy old cuts, Cape-colored diamonds—these run contrary to mass-market trends, yet such quirky-quaint attributes are often what we find most alluring about old jewelry. We’ve learned to trust our own eyes and hearts when determining what suits us as individuals. We encourage our customers to do the same. Ignore the voices. Be your own lamp. Do you.
We also advocate for secondary markets in hopes of undercutting unsustainable mining processes. Reality is that mining is terrible for Earth and its myriad occupants. There are already so many beautiful pieces and stones in the world! Rather than dig up new material, we find it more fulfilling and responsible to rediscover what’s already out there, awaiting its new time to shine.
If you're getting engaged, call us! We understand that cultural pressures can make acquiring a ring needlessly stressful. We hope to bridge the gap between the simple desire to acquire an engagement ring and the esoteric world that is "antique jewelry." Let us help you out by providing some historical and technical insight, even if you end up getting your ring elsewhere. We have a lot of knowledge between the two of us, and we'd be pleased to share!
Running Pebble & Polish is Matt’s full-time job. Web design, photography, accessions, jewelry design, minor repairs, historical research...that's all on Matt. And he loves it! He's stoked by the creative and intellectual challenges inherent to such disparate tasks. Matt’s accreditations include a BA in art history from the University of LaVerne, MA and MPhil in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU (technically he stopped at PhD ABD in order to start Pebble), a post-graduate certificate in curatorial studies overseen by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and NYU, and a Graduate Diamonds diploma from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).
Shauna is very much the wizard behind the curtain, running the back end of the shop and keeping us functioning as a business. She runs our social media accounts, providing all the quips and clips you see on Instagram. Bookkeeping and inventory management fall under Shauna’s purview as well. And she’s our hand model! Yet this is secondary to her true career as Senior Conservator of Modern Paintings at a major conservation studio in NYC. Shauna has treated a great many artworks by Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper Johns, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko... the list goes on. She is thoroughly committed to the ethical preservation of art, a pledge that aligns with Pebble's raison d'etre. Shauna’s formal education includes a BA in art history from NYU and a four-year MA in art history and conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
A Southern gentleman if there ever was one! Cashew—believed to be half Dachshund, half Spaniel—was born and raised for the first two years of his life in Tennessee. But they were hard years and he soon found himself in a shelter. We were thrilled to adopt Cashew in 2012, bringing him to NYC to start his life afresh. And what a life! Cashew loves hiking, burrowing, and rock-hopping his way through local trails, though he's perhaps at his most content when sitting idly in a window observing the city’s passers by. That is, of course, when he isn’t perched on Matt’s desk like a cat, casting that piteous gaze so effective at garnering treats. The dude’s a fiend.
