Birthdays have always been a big deal for Karen Lorene, owner of Facere Jewelry Art Gallery in Seattle.
   “I had a mother who made wonder out of birthdays. When you woke up in bed, you’d feel the presents by your toes,” she says. “When I got married, I told my husband three things were sacred. One, Valentines. Two, Easter baskets on Easter morning. And three, birthdays.”
   For her 70th this month, Lorene naturally wanted to do something special. So she’s presenting a show of 70 new jewelry pieces made for the occasion, each interpreting a year from 1940 to today.
   “We sent out an announcement to artists we’ve worked with, inviting them to pick a year. It was first come, first served. The 1960s disappeared immediately, mostly taken by people who weren’t even born then.”
   The result is a sort of visual history of the modern era, in miniature. “Some of the pieces are personal, some political. Some are secret. Some are funny. Certain ones make me teary,” Lorene says. “The artists made it truly about what those years meant to them.”
   Mary Lee Hu created a tender gold corsage for 2008, a year in which she fell in love. Ron Ho indulged his passion for MGM movie musicals in his Limehouse Blues Revisited necklace, an exuberant homage to 1946. Many pieces directly reference historical events, from World War II to Watergate and beyond. There’s Rosa Parks, a bus brooch by Judith Hoyt (1955); Mount St. Helens, a ring by Alisa Miller (1980); Suzann Gallup’s Princess of Cups earrings, a tribute to Diana of Wales (1997); and a 9/11 memorial by Davide Bigazzi entitled The Rising, a silver cuff in the shape of a tower, dotted with images of floating paper.
   Other works implicitly capture a look and vibe. Laurie Hall’s Boomerang necklace (1950) is an elegant take on mid-century modern, while Steve Ford and David Forlano’s trippy, Carnaby-Street-inspired brooch evokes 1964, the year both were born. Todd Pownell ingeniously blends past and present in La Beaute est dans la rue, an iPod nano he’s adorned with iconic poster art from the Paris student riots of 1968, and loaded with video, stills and music from that tumultuous year.
  Considered one of America’s leading dealers in vintage and contemporary art jewelry, the bubbly, youthful Lorene has long been a vibrant presence on the arts scene in Seattle, where she lives in a houseboat on Lake Union. Originally a schoolteacher, she started selling antiques on her front porch in 1972, and by the 90s was appearing as a guest appraiser on TV’s Antiques Roadshow. In 1984 she launched Facere, where the “Celebrating 70” exhibit opens August 19 with a bash to toast her birthday and nearly four decades in business.
   “People always ask me, ‘How long are you going to stay at it?’ Well, probably until they find me here on the floor,” she says cheerfully. “I still love coming to work every day.” A fully illustrated book accompanies the show, which runs through September 5.

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