Springer’s Jewelers brings estate jewelry pop-up to Portland museum
Bring the family ring, the bent-clasp brooch and the questions that outlast stories: Springer’s will decode estate pieces at a free Portland museum pop-up.
Bring the ring with the worn shank, the brooch with the bent pin stem and the bracelet whose clasp looks newer than the links, then ask the jeweler about marks inside a band, repairs, missing stones and altered settings. On May 21 at the Portland Museum of Art, Springer’s Jewelers will turn inherited pieces into evidence, pairing an estate-jewelry pop-up with an Ask a Jeweler session built for the kind of close looking that family lore alone cannot supply.
Third Thursday | Precious Stories with Springer’s Jewelers and the Museum of Beadwork will run from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square in Portland, Maine. Admission will be free all day and evening, part of the museum’s Art for All program supported by an $800,000 Art Bridges Access for All grant that funds free Third Thursday programming through 2026. The Ask a Jeweler session and the estate-jewelry pop-up will both take place from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., while a 4:00 p.m. bracelet-beading workshop called Wildflower with the Museum of Beadwork will cost $25 and require registration.
Springer’s Jewelers, a family-owned coastal New England chain with stores in Bath, Portland and Portsmouth, has served patrons since 1870. The museum calls it Maine’s oldest operating jewelry store and one of the oldest fine jewelers in the United States. Springer’s says its PAGE Estate Collection features curated vintage, pre-owned and pre-loved jewelry, and the museum’s event listing says visitors will be able to explore pieces spanning eras and styles, try them on and learn their histories. For anyone sorting through a grandmother’s diamond ring or a flea-market brooch, that kind of direct comparison can reveal more than a certificate ever will.
The pop-up also sits inside Precious: The Value of Ornament, on view from March 13 through July 19, 2026. The exhibition places jewelry and decorative arts alongside works by Indigenous, Black, queer and women artists, and it includes new acquisitions such as Shane Perley-Dutcher’s Kikehtahsu (Healing) and Kamrooz Aram’s Untitled (Arabesque Composition). The museum frames the show around how significance and value are assigned to objects and how museums have historically collected and interpreted them. In that light, an estate clasp, a repaired chain or a reset stone becomes more than a keepsake. It becomes material history, legible in gold, glass and solder.
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