[Jewelry making - Article 00426] - Re: [Orchid] BFA/MFA Vs technical training

[John Donivan]

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>     I'm rather surprised at the number of people who feel their art
>     degree did nothing for them. Aside from four years of immersing
>     yourself in the arts, didn't you feel you got any benefit 

    I will say that my schooling consists of one semester of a University
    jewelry class, and the GIA diamond course. The rest has been
    on-the-job. When you talk about jewelry design, though, I think
    you're talking about two different things. I am a jewelry designer. I
    design a piece of jewelry, and then sit down and make it. The other
    kind of jewelry designer does renderings, and they are made by
    someone else. My kind of designer is probably the most typical, and
    it's obvious that you need technical skills for the execution part.
    The other kind is more rare, largely because there's less call for
    it. Mostly only the very large houses have in-house designers of that
    sort. Nowadays there are more CAD designers, just doing CAD, but
    those aren't renderers per se. There is a free-lance business -
    door-to-door designers who show samples and then sell designs sight
    unseen. (because even a glance of a design is enough). A word of
    caution, too. I see many very nice renderings that aren't actually
    jewelry designs. Someone posted some here, lately. Very nice work,
    very nice designs. But where's the orthoscopic view? What's
    underneath, where does that curve come from, where do the prongs come
    from, how does all this turn into a ring shank? It's true that a good
    jeweler can take that drawing and turn it into a ring, though I've
    even seen some "impossible" designs - drawn well, but cannot be done
    in 3d, like Escher. That, again, is where a knowlege of the mechanics
    and engineering (I liken it to building a bridge) of jewelry is
    needed. I see drawings of pretty dots on paper, just lovely. But if
    you count, you'll have 250 prongs, and there's no way shown for
    anything to connect to anything else, they're just floating in space.
    Yes, it's a jewelry design, but it's actually only 1/2 of one... 

http://www.donivanandmaggiora.com
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