APPOINTMENTS

Terri Eagle has been appointed to the newly created position of executive vice president of Yurman Design Inc., New York, which operates under the brand name David Yurman. Eagle has 17 years of luxury sales and marketing experience. Most recently, she was responsible for opening the first David Yurman retail store and for restructuring the sales organization, field operations, and customer service support. Prior to joining the company, she was vice president of sales and marketing at Montblanc North America.

Josephine Lynn Dillon has been named marketing director at Silver Trust International, New York, the marketing arm of the silver industry. She will serve as liaison with the trade community and will develop and manage STI’s retail cooperative programs for sterling silver jewelry, gifts, and tabletop ware, including national and regional ad campaigns, direct-response efforts, and promotional events. She also edits the company’s newsletter. Previously, she was assistant director of 41 Madison, New York, home to permanent luxury tabletop showrooms.

OBITUARIES

Stewart H. Gilinsky, 88, active in the jewelry industry for more than 50 years as the third generation of Bergman Jewelers of Omaha, Neb., died Jan. 30. When he joined the firm, it was a watch parts and materials house started by his grandfather-in-law in 1888. Under his leadership, it became a jewelry wholesaler selling to smaller retail jewelers in all 50 states. In the past 10 years, it became a fine jewelry retail firm and recently was inducted into the American Gem Society. Until two weeks before his death, he continued to open up the store early in the morning. His son and daughter and two of his five grandsons are all active in the business.

Harry Pampillonia, 77, president of Pampillonia Jewelers of Washington, D.C., and Hot Springs, Va., died of a heart attack Jan. 25. Born in New York and raised in Washington, he was a bench jeweler and designer for 54 years. He founded the firm with his father and operated it with his brother.

DENIS PERLMAN, MASS. JEWELER

Denis Perlman, 47, founder and owner of Silverscape Designs, jewelry stores in Northampton and Amherst, Mass., died Jan. 9 when the single-engine plane he was flying crashed outside Charleston, S.C. According to the Northampton Daily Hampshire, the plane went down in dense fog while circling above the airport runway. More than 100 people searched for the plane, which was finally found in a marshy area, the paper reported. There were no passengers.

Perlman was born in Greenwich, Conn. He had an early interest in minerals and learned basic jewelry-making skills as a student at the Putney School in Putney, Vt. After graduation, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and sold handcrafted items as a Harvard Square vendor. After his first year, he took a leave of absence from MIT to make and sell jewelry while traveling across the United States and Canada in a renovated school bus. He later returned to MIT and graduated with a major in molecular biology and a minor in architecture.

Perlman opened the first Silverscape Designs in Amherst in 1976 in a Victorian house that he redesigned and expanded while maintaining the original architectural details. He later opened a Silverscape Designs gallery in Northampton. On his 40th birthday, he bought an art deco bank building for $380,000 and renovated and redesigned it to house the store’s main location.