If you are reading this, I hope you came to my blog because you have decided that having a career in the jewelry trade might be fun and interesting.
I have no idea what you think you will find here. I also am not sure what you need to hear so all I can do is try to connect with written words and try to point you in a good direction using my own experiences as a model.
So we quickly circle back to the original question. “How do I start?“
I should begin with how I started as a jeweler.
As a matter of full disclosure I should mention that in high school, I failed every art class I ever took. Completely zero artistic ability. A few years later (1985) when a friend helped me make my first crude pendant out of a piece of scrap brass, I am not sure what I made could be considered jewelry by most standards. I kept at it and made jewelry because I liked the process, Making things, Not because it was any good. Really, if you compared my first attempts at jewelry those first few years to dog poo, you were being unfair to dog poo!
But it is amazing what some practice will do.
After a few years, I was making stuff that was actually quite nice for my skill level. It was then that I was at the same point you are now. I decided that having a career in the jewelry trade might be fun and interesting. But where to start? I decided the best path was to keep practicing and to try to get a job selling jewelry. It took a while but I learned from the jewelers I worked with just by watching and asking questions. So we quickly circle back to the original question. “How do I start?“
How did I get started?
Well, it is important to know that I failed every art class in high school. Not that I took many considering that I dropped out in the middle of 10th grade. It was, and still is safe to say that I have not a bit of artistic talent. So I join the Army and was eventually stationed at Fort Hood TX. After a few months on the base I ran into a friend who I had been training with at a base in Georgia. He had just joined a historical reenactment group called the SCA (The Society for Creative Anachronism sca.org) so I went with him to a fighter practice and I was hooked as I have always have had an interest in history.
So part of this group has to do with wearing costumes as if you were someone in the past. So I made some very basic tunics. One thing I was missing was the appropriate jewelry to match my costume. So I approach one of the members (Shout out to Lon Putman!) who had some great jewelry for his family and himself. I found out that he did not buy it, he made it! He tells me that the Arts and Crafts Center on the base has a room for making jewelry. So we meet there and with the help of Lon and other group members (John Alvey & LauraJo Smole) I try and make some truly horrible stuff for the next couple of years until I left the Army.
For me jewelry was a way to teach myself patience as the quality was very lacking. So fast forward a few years and I am still doing jewelry as a hobby in my laundry room. With my interest in history, I was trying to teach myself how to make jewelry and also how people in the past would have done the same thing without modern tools. I could not tell you when my hobby turned to a passion but it did.
So here I am in my early 20s with little skills and no experience with customer service. So what do I do? I decided to make jewelry my career. I started by working for a slew of jewelry stores and eventually managed to get a job working for a custom jewelry store as a salesman. The entire time I was working on getting enough money to take GIA classes and began to collect books about the jewelry trade, jewelry, historical jewelry, and the decorative arts. I was learning wherever and from whoever I could. I ended up managing a couple of smaller stores while working at home to improve my skills at the bench.
it was about this time that I was working out of my spare bedroom and I repaired a couple of sterling rings for a friend. It did not take long before I was doing about 20 repair jobs a week and I discovered that I could make a good living doing repairs.
Remember when I said about that I have no artistic ability? Still true. But I do have technical ability. While my original work will never win awards, I can take a damaged jewelry item and make it look new again. I can easily see the steps needed to deconstruct and then reconstruct an item.
I then spent several years working on my own as a bench jeweler with several accounts and making original items to sell at art fairs and to those with an interest in historical recreations.
I had a pretty good run until some neurological problems turned jewelry back into a hobby. Now that those are mostly over and dealt with I take anyone who is interested and drag them to my shop and teach them and hope that they get that same passion I do.
I now consider myself a professional jewelry educator. I start with teaching the basics as best I can because the basics are important. I try to teach repairs as well. While you may want to create great art, it is the repair side of the industry that is going to give you a paycheck while you refine your skills and designs.
One thing that is interesting is that we have a huge amount of “art” jewelers who stayed here after graduating from the arts program here at the University of Wisconsin Madison so in this town we have about 3 times more custom jewelers than a town this size normally has. This makes me want to keep trying to think of ways to get the technical collage here to add basic bench jeweler classes. Basic classes on repairs and basic bench tasks. I have seen so many new metal art graduates come through the door with some pictures and full of hope thinking they will start at $60,000 a year and be a big designer. It made me feel bad when I had to ask them how many rings they can size in a day (most have never sized a ring), chain repairs. explain the steps in polishing (most can’t), etc. Most schools do not teach the skills needed for an entry level jeweler.
I know a few great designers in town and some were hired with art degrees. But the all started at minimum wage or a bit more, and they all started with polishing jewelry for half to more than a year before they ever sat at a bench.
It is all good to learn the Art side of jewelry, but that is rarely where a paycheck to pay the bills comes from. I wish I had a way to get this idea in front of people at schools so they can put in some classes that will help new jewelers get jobs.
Sorry. I was ranting a bit. I hope that was ok.
So I am going to circle back to the original question. “How do I start?“
Honestly, in my opinion, just start. Talk to people, read books, make notes and drawings, watch YouTube videos which was not around when I started (With a grain of salt because many are not showing you good technique). And practice, practice, practice. If you can get a part time job working in a shop, that helps. If you are lucky enough to have family in the trade, you are way up on most of us.
Get your hands dirty. Make something, hit it with a hammer, then bring it back to what it was before. Buy a bunch of silver jewelry from an auction or second hand store and size them up 2 sizes, then down a size, then replace the main gems. Also, have a large trashcan. Make a pendant. then make 10 more identical to it. Make notes between each one and see what you did that worked and where you need to improve. That is how I did it. Make a lot of stuff with the express purpose of not giving it to anyone. That way you are not worried about anything but learning.
One warning is to not compare yourself to those who are more skilled. Comparison can be the death of joy. Look at the work of those better than you to learn, but do not compare your work to them. As an example, When you do your first 5 or ten settings in a prong setting, do not compare them to what I can do. I have done THOUSANDS! Practice your skills and record your work. then work on getting into the trade.
Getting started is that easy. but also hard if you want to excel at it.
So I am not sure this answered the original question, but it is my take on the subject.
As always if you have questions or comments, please let me know.
