[Jewelry making - Article 00212] - Re: [Orchid] Definition of Master Jeweller

[roberto]

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    When I moved from Italy to Canada I made some interesting
    discoveries. I found that potters and shoemaket are artists, and even
    jewellers and woodworkers. Where I am coming from the arts are those
    classical, artists are sculptors, painters, writers... Mind a
    jeweller to call himself artist. 

    The word artist can be used as sobstitute of robber! Will you trust
    a store where the jewellers promote himself as an artist? Another
    discovery was that there is jewellers, jewellers, jewellers,
    jewellers, jewellers, setters, engravers, casters, silversmiths and
    few others things. Where I am coming from there are:
    jewellers-Gioiellieri, those who sell jewels and/or make jewellery,
    the stuff with precious stones, gold (750) and platinum. 

    Jewellers-Orafi, (probably goldsmith?), those who work with gold,
    make and repair ornaments, (oreficeria), in Italy they use gold (750)
    silver and semi precious stones. 

    Jewellers-Bigiottieri, those who make fake jewellery, sometime as
    well made and expensive as some of the oreficeria pieces. In Milano
    there was and still is, I think, a shop specializing in making
    replicas of the real piece of jewellery to wear at the theatre while
    the original stay safe in the bank. Jewellers- well, this don't even
    exist as a real profession, Paccottagliatori? Housewife/hobbyist?
    Those guys that string together beads and make those earrings style
    "Victorian-hippy" or
    "primitive-newromantic-futuristic-practical-cheap-300-$-please",
    "hooooo my Gooood you can wear it any time". 

    Jewellers-those that come out from a two to four years jewellery
    school (we have all been there at some point, and is hard and
    glorious, beautiful to me.) what really quiz me here is that the
    school is often university level, and the students are ready to make
    another 100.000? dollars debt investment in
    cad/cam/laser/puck/tumbler and (I have just seen a couple of them so
    don't be harsh on me) don't know how to sit at the bench and hold a
    file, you said soldering? Setters-incassatori. Engravers-incisori.
    Casters-fonditori. Silversmiths, argentieri, cesellatori, sbalzatori. 


    What I am trying to say is that maybe it is more important to define
    the difference between an ornament maker using gold, platinum and
    gems, and another using glass beads, pops caps and then will be more
    logic to find the meaning of master and I am sure we can find masters
    in both the aspects of ornaments makers. 

    For my experience what are really gone are not the persons with
    those skills but the costumers ready to pay for a jewel made by them.
    This especially apply in our countries, democracies and consumerism
    are cancelling the audience for masterpieces and moved the geniuses
    from jewellery making to computer programming and more lucrative
    professions. I won't be surprised to find skills of high calibre in
    India or China, where labour still has a price affordable. But here
    who can afford to pay a master jeweller to sit on the bench for 100
    hours? 500? 2000? How long will take to make a Faberge egg? a Tiffany
    necklace? A Lalique hair pin? Long time are gone the artisan who are
    too easy to mistake for artist such as Mr Miller, I had the luck to
    learn to work with a couple of jewellers of that calibre. 

    I started working at the bench when I was 14 and already at my time
    there was not many left who where starting like that. I did my school
    in the evening after work and I owe a great deal to all those who
    thought me how to use the blow torch, make solders, use tap and die
    to make screws, make earrings backings with w/g spring, recycle
    filing, hammer a shank on the anvil, make the impossible happen,
    keep filing and talking about anything, politica, calcio, donne,
    fight and laugh about it and steel be "on the job". 

    None of those who I learned from said to me he was my master, all of
    them where mastering ther tools much better than me. A master in my
    country, maestro, is a teacher, especially for elementary school,
    after you have professors. I still remember the embarrassment of my
    engraving professor, in school, when we where calling him professor! 

    Sometime the job was explained, most of the time I had to "steal
    it", "noticing" how my colleague was using his torch, the mill, the
    drill, because often these guys where jealous about their knowledge
    and where keeping jungsters like me away, maybe afraid to be
    equalled. 

    Sometimes I feel like in Italy I was working for a good living by
    making on obsession of my work. Now I have to work like an obsessed
    to make a living. 

    Cheer up! Is just that times are changing I stopped reading Gogol
    and here, I discovered Google. 

Roberto
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