As a kid growing up in Brownsville, Texas, Beth Bugdaycay, the designer of fine-jewelry line Foundrae, used to pore over the illustrated pages in a vintage dictionary her father bought at the consulate in Matamoros, Mexico, in the early ’70s. “When I went back and saw that book as an adult, I realized how much it had influenced my jewelry designs, from the colors to the symbols I use,” Bugdaycay says. Now the dictionary sits in the middle of her TriBeCa living room, which is populated with things like her great-grandmother’s darning egg and a stamp from her grandfather’s collection. “It’s important to live with items, appreciate them, and pass them down,” she says. “Everything in our lives was passed down, from our names to the way we live. I…
