 Jeweler's studio in São Paulo | |
| Occupation | |
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Occupation type | Vocational |
| Description | |
Education required | Vocational school |
A bench jeweler is an artisan who uses a combination of skills to make and repair jewelry. Some of the more common skills that a bench jeweler might employ include antique restoration, silversmithing, goldsmithing, stone setting, engraving, fabrication, wax carving, lost-wax casting, electroplating, forging, & polishing. [1] [2]
In general, an original design is made and sold using processes such as molding, casting, stamping and similar techniques. The other is original, one of a kind work. The bench jeweler will be a factor in many facets of the process, depending on what is needed and the skills of the worker.
When a production piece is contemplated, it may go through a design process that can range from one person with an idea to a full-scale planning stage involving teams of artists and marketing professionals. Eventually, that design will need to be made into a real piece of metal jewelry, which is generally called a model, and the worker who makes it is generally the model maker. This is often considered the highest form of craftsmanship, as the piece must be made true to the design and also to most exacting standards. A good model maker is, along with a fine watchmaker, among the most technically skilled workers in any trade. After the model is made and found to be what is desired, it is molded or perhaps entered into a machining process to make copies. Assuming it is molded, multiples of the piece are cast from the mold. See lost-wax casting, which article has a sculptural inclination, though the principles are the same for jewelry casting. The cast pieces will likely need a variety of work done to them, including filing to remove the skin left from casting and prepare for polishing, straightening parts, rounding and sizing rings, and assembling many various parts together using solder. Although the method used is called soldering, it is actually a form of brazing, using "solders" of the metal being worked, i.e. gold solders for gold pieces, silver solder for silver pieces, etc. All of this is the work of bench jewelers, who at this level are sometimes known as production workers in some arenas. In this context, the bench jeweler (often known simply as a goldsmith) is responsible for all of the main work involved in turning a raw casting into a piece of jewelry - filing it, straightening it, assembling parts or adding settings for stones, repairing any problems that might have occurred, and preparing it for stone setting and polishing. [3]
In the United States the Seybold Building is a historic jewelry building in Miami, Florida. [4] It was designed by Kiehnel and Elliott. The building was erected in two stages. The first three levels of the building were completed in 1921. John Seybold had a bakery and confectionery business which he operated on the main floor. An additional seven stories were added above the annex in 1925. [5] The Seybold Building is a City of Miami historic landmark. [6] Seybold sold the complex in 1941. [7] It is a National Register of Historic Places contributing property as part of the Downtown Miami Historic District. Seybold Building the 2nd largest diamond and jewelry center in the United States at 166,000 square feet. [8] The plan to transform the Seybold Building into a jeweler's hub had a helping hand from the Cuban revolution.
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Special-order jewelry is the making of one of a kind items and is not too different from model making. The Main difference between the two is that the special-order piece is made in precious materials, while often a model is not, and the need for exacting precision is nowhere near as high as in model making. Generally, the special order jewelers take a design, either their own or a customer's, and turn it into a piece of finished jewelry from start to finish. This process, like model making, can be fairly simple Wax Carving to be cast into metal, or it can involve very complex fabrication skills building the piece out of the actual metal using a wide variety of skills and tools. Very often both model making and special order involve gemstones, and thus the pieces must be designed and made to properly hold those.
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It will be obvious that any manufacturer of any product will design a workshop to one's own liking and it may defy convention. There are, however, some typical categories that most shops in the jewelry trade will employ. If it is a manufacturing workshop, likely it will begin with the casting room, then to the bench jewelers or goldsmiths, perhaps to the polishing department and maybe to stonesetting. Generally, there will be at least one model maker, who may also do special orders, or there may be a dedicated special order department and sometimes even repair, depending on the size of the shop. Usually, there is also at least one foreman and also a front office handling management. In addition, there might be engravers, enlistments, perhaps a machine shop and others, depending on the product being made. A good shop behaves as a team, each department doing its part and the work passing back and forth between them as needed. In this situation, each one is a specialist at one's job, and though they all may have a broader background that becomes useful at times, they generally will not enter into another department's expertise. Each department also recognizes the worker's abilities, so that there may be ten workers called "goldsmiths", but one will have simple skills, and another may have greatly higher ability, and so the more or less challenging jobs are assigned accordingly.
Although the term bench jeweler is a contemporary term with vague meaning, it often is used to describe a jeweler who has a larger set of skills than that of a production worker who merely files and solders rings. Thus they may have a fair knowledge of stone setting, a bit of engraving, and perhaps other skills that widen their abilities. For a long time throughout history the model was as described above under "Anatomy of a Jewelry Shop", with a fairly strict delineation of responsibilities. In the modern day, there are a great many jewelers who do it all, from design to stone setting to finishing with fair ability. Whether it is used in one context or another, there is no doubt that the bench jeweler is the jewelry worker who does the major metal work and the brazing, and its meaning can also be taken more widely to mean one who is more versatile in the trade than merely an assembler of parts. The term can and has been used to describe any of the work described above - model making, special order, repair, assembly, and more, though it is probably becoming a term to describe an all-around jeweler more and more in recent years. [9] [2]
A workbench is a sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewellers benches to the huge benches used by staircase makers. Almost all workbenches are rectangular in shape, often using the surface, corners and edges as flat/square and dimension standards. Design is as varied as the type of work for which the benches are used but most share these attributes:
Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale: from huge ships, buildings, and bridges down to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry.
A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms silversmith and goldsmith are not exact synonyms, as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are largely the same but differed in that the end product may vary greatly.
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and serviceable utensils, and ceremonial or religious items.
Lost-wax casting – also called investment casting, precision casting, or cire perdue – is the process by which a duplicate sculpture is cast from an original sculpture. Intricate works can be achieved by this method.
A metalsmith or simply smith is a craftsperson fashioning useful items out of various metals. Smithing is one of the oldest metalworking occupations. Shaping metal with a hammer (forging) is the archetypical component of smithing. Often the hammering is done while the metal is hot, having been heated in a forge. Smithing can also involve the other aspects of metalworking, such as refining metals from their ores, casting it into shapes (founding), and filing to shape and size.
This article is a list of terms commonly used in the practice of metalworking – the science, art, industry, and craft of shaping metal.
Jewellery as an art form originated as an expression of human culture. Body ornamentation, one purpose of jewellery, has been known since at least the Stone Age. The history of jewellery in Ukraine reflects the influence of many cultures and peoples who have occupied the territory in the past and present.
Lifecasting is the process of creating a three-dimensional copy of a living human body, through the use of molding and casting techniques. In rare cases lifecasting is also practiced on living animals. The most common lifecasts are 3D hand casting, casting of torsoes, pregnant bellies, faces, and genitalia and it is possible for an experienced lifecasting practitioner to copy any part of the body. Lifecasting is usually limited to a section of the body at a time, but full-body lifecasts are achievable too. Compared with other three-dimensional representations of humans, the standout feature of lifecasts is their high level of realism and detail. Lifecasts can replicate details as small as fingerprints and pores.
Jewelry of the Etruscan civilization existed in several eras.
Art jewelry is one of the names given to jewelry created by studio craftspeople. As the name suggests, art jewelry emphasizes creative expression and design, and is characterized by the use of a variety of materials, often commonplace or of low economic value. In this sense, it forms a counterbalance to the use of "precious materials" in conventional or fine jewelry, where the value of the object is tied to the value of the materials from which it is made. Art jewelry is related to studio craft in other media such as glass, wood, plastics and clay; it shares beliefs and values, education and training, circumstances of production, and networks of distribution and publicity with the wider field of studio craft. Art jewelry also has links to fine art and design.
The Alfred I. DuPont Building is a historic building in Miami, Florida. It is located at 169 East Flagler Street. Started in 1937 and completed in 1939, it is a 17-story rectangular building in the Modern style with Art Deco embellishments. It was the first skyscraper built after the County courthouse and the bust of 1928. Thus it represents Miami's emergence from the great depression. It replaced the Halcyon Hotel on this site. On January 4, 1989, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
In casting, a pattern is a replica of the object to be cast, used to form the sand mould cavity into which molten metal is poured during the casting process. Once the pattern has been used to form the sand mould cavity, the pattern is then removed, Molten metal is then poured into the sand mould cavity to produce the casting. The pattern is non consumable and can be reused to produce further sand moulds almost indefinitely.
Black Hills gold jewelry is a type of jewelry manufactured in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was first created in the 1870s during the Black Hills Gold Rush by a French goldsmith named Henri LeBeau, who is said to have dreamed about the design after passing out from thirst and starvation. Black Hills gold jewelry depicts leaves, grape clusters and vines, and is made with alloys of gold with standard yellow gold as well as green and pink gold. In 1980, the 8th Circuit affirmed an injunction ruling that if a manufacturer was to call its jewelry Black Hills Gold, then it must be made in the Black Hills. The state of South Dakota designated Black Hills gold as the official state jewelry in 1988.
Native American jewelry refers to items of personal adornment, whether for personal use, sale or as art; examples of which include necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings and pins, as well as ketohs, wampum, and labrets, made by one of the Indigenous peoples of the United States. Native American jewelry normally reflects the cultural diversity and history of its makers, but tribal groups have often borrowed and copied designs and methods from other, neighboring tribes or nations with which they had trade, and this practice continues today. Native American tribes continue to develop distinct aesthetics rooted in their personal artistic visions and cultural traditions. Artists may create jewelry for adornment, ceremonies, and display, or for sale or trade. Lois Sherr Dubin writes, "[i]n the absence of written languages, adornment became an important element of Indian communication, conveying many levels of information." Later, jewelry and personal adornment "...signaled resistance to assimilation. It remains a major statement of tribal and individual identity."
The Middle Ages was a period that spanned approximately 1000 years and is normally restricted to Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The material remains we have from that time, including jewelry, can vary greatly depending on the place and time of their creation, especially as Christianity discouraged the burial of jewellery as grave goods, except for royalty and important clerics, who were often buried in their best clothes and wearing jewels. The main material used for jewellery design in antiquity and leading into the Middle Ages was gold. Many different techniques were used to create working surfaces and add decoration to those surfaces to produce the jewellery, including soldering, plating and gilding, repoussé, chasing, inlay, enamelling, filigree and granulation, stamping, striking and casting. Major stylistic phases include barbarian, Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian, Viking, and the Late Middle Ages, when Western European styles became relatively similar.
Seybold Building is a historic jewelry building in Miami, Florida. It was designed by Kiehnel and Elliott. The building was erected in two stages. The first three levels of the building were completed in 1921. John Seybold had a bakery and confectionery business which he operated on the main floor. An additional seven stories were added above the annex in 1925. The Seybold Building is a City of Miami historic landmark. Seybold sold the complex in 1941. It is a National Register of Historic Places contributing property as part of the Downtown Miami Historic District.
A tunjo is a small anthropomorh or zoomorph figure elaborated by the Muisca as part of their art. Tunjos were made of gold or tumbaga; a gold-silver-copper alloy. The Muisca used their tunjos in various instances in their religion and the small votive offering figures have been found in various places on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia. Tunjos were used as offer pieces, to communicate with the gods and when the Muisca asked for favours from their deities. Muisca scholar Pedro Simón wrote about the tunjos of the Muisca.
Oscar Massin (1829–1913) was a Belgian-born French jeweler known as “The Diamond Reformer," who created some of the 19th centuries most influential and innovative fine jewelry that radically redefined a new era for the industry at large. While Massin remains one of the least-known Parisian jewelers, he produced some of the most significant works of his time, many for European royalty. Massin is celebrated for his patented diamond lacework technique, which uses filigree to create the illusion of woven metal. Massin is also credited with creating the first “illusory” setting, designed to emphasize the size of the diamond by minimizing the metal around it.
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