Jewellery (23/24)

Learn essential core skills in jewellery making, to build confidence and know-how. A carefully structured series of projects will introduce you to a range of materials, techniques and processes. Returning students can choose to develop their individual design ideas. Whilst fine metalworking continues to underpin much jewellery practice, exploration of other materials, such as paper, fabric or wood, can also be considered.

Jewellery can encompass a wide range of materials including found and natural resources such as feather, stone, and wood as well as composites like plastics, paper and felt. However, for the introductory programme metals (and in particular precious metals) are the primary materials used, reflecting their prevalence in traditional and contemporary jewellery. These metals offer unique visual and physical characteristics and are very relevant to jewellery design, as well as symbolic, cultural and financial influences. Copper alloys are a versatile group of metals that can be used as an alternative to more expensive metals, enabling you to practice and gain understanding in core jewellery making skills, gaining insight to inherent characteristics before committing to precious metals.||Sample Brief: This first project introduces you to a selection of techniques and visual thinking that underpins jewellery design practice, starting with explorations using metal sheet and section (provided) and investigating some of the many transformations that can be created using various introduced processes. This 10 session programme will introduce you to skills that enable you to design and make a banded rings, bangles or pendant forms.These designs will be developed from exploratory sampling, using metal wire, strip and sheet material of different weight and section.||Sessions 1-4: Explore and adapt a range of introduced wire working techniques that includes: Twisting in various combinations: regular and random; Changes to section and scale: round, square and flat strip; Bending and forming; Tacking and layering mixed combinations.||Sessions 5-10: Review samples and use what has been learnt selectively to generate one or more ring designs. At this stage precious metals can be used as appropriate and information will be given in regards to stockists and purchasing. On completion of this project you should have a series of finger rings made for yourself or others and gained practical experience and understanding of: Annealing; Manipulation; Work hardening; Reduction rolling; Wire drawing; Soldering; Planishing; Texturing and burnishing processes.||During the course you will document your workshop practice in a small journal, integrate contextual information from books and journals provided, and collect illustrations of the use of wire in jewellery. You will also be taught and expected to follow health and safety rules when in the studio.