Are Your Goldsmiths/Jewelers Formally Trained?

I am a qualified jeweler of 45 years having worked in south-africa,london,and australia.Idid a 5 year apprentership in London.I fabricate jewelry from metal or wax.I recently visited the U.S.I handle all aspects of jewelry.I am looking for a position where I can use my skills yours truly mr S.Silver.

I'm a "formally trained" bench jeweler, but say that with a little
reservation. Yes, I do have a piece of paper that says I took the
classes, but the real education came in the shop working on real
jobs. At school all we set were 4-6mm CZs. Its a little different
when you've got to channel set a row of colored stones that were
not cut by machines to the same proportions. The same goes for
everything else I do. They left out a lot of topics, skills
processes that are essential to a bench jeweler. I couldn’t
agree more with Jonathan. I left school with the ability to do a
lot of things as long as I had an entire semester and as many
attempts as I needed to get it right. If I broke a stone or ruined
a mounting it didn’t really matter. You could do the same
"job" a dozen times until you got it perfect. Now, if I do the same
things its quite a bit more serious, and expensive. In hindsight, I
know the school I went to wasn’t anything near the best but,
I also feel that no matter where I went I would have been under
prepared for the real thing. As for the compensation part of the
discussion, again, I agree with Jonathan. Pay them what they are
worth to you. I know I could make more if I went someplace else.
But I enjoy the people I work with and the setting I’m in. My
boss doesn’t pay much compared to other jewelers around town,
but when viewed with the amount of business the store does I am
much more understanding. The owner and I have a good relationship,
and remain open with each other about how we both feel he, I, and
we are doing. I'm more willing to take less pay for a position in a
store where I know I'm cared for and my opinion is respected. Hire
the person who is the best fit for the job, pay them what you are
comfortable with, whether or not they have a piece of paper saying
the passed a few classes.

Shanu, your question could not have been more opportune. I have
been crying myself hoarse since the last 4 years about the need to
have owners, their kids and all those who oversee production to
understand the nuances of bench jewellery. In India we still have
this huge problem of working with your hands. You are just not
considered savvy enough if you sit on a bench and work with your
hands. I have had designers bring their daughters to join our bench
jewellery program and their response is that they want to create
and not become babus. What they don’t realize is that their
created designs simply remain drawings until they are manufactured
and probably .05% of those drawings get made. It is important for
all in the jewellery industry, designers, production control
managers, quality control department and owners to go through
formal training on the bench. Students who have done this bench
jewellery program quietly confess that to me they seem to know more
than their bosses/ husbands / fathers and fathers in law on account
of the 1000 hours that they have sat on the bench. It is critical
that the industry hires trained professionally qualified persons. I
agree with Crystal, formal training will not ensure brilliance but
it will definitely ensure a standard proficiency. Also the time
spent in teaching on the job can perhaps be used more productively.
Jonathan’s perspective is definitely biased. The problems he
has mentioned about attitude and other stuff are prevalent in all
other programs too be it a student from a B school, accountancy or
fashion yet today no one would dare to enter into these industries
without some kind of formal education. The answer to your question
is that there is a crying need to have formally trained gold
smiths.

Shanu, your question could not have been more opportune. I have
been crying myself hoarse since the last 4 years about the need to
have owners, their kids and all those who oversee production to
understand the nuances of bench jewellery. In India we still have
this huge problem of working with your hands. You are just not
considered savvy enough if you sit on a bench and work with your
hands. I have had designers bring their daughters to join our bench
jewellery program and their response is that they want to create
and not become babus. What they don’t realize is that their
created designs simply remain drawings until they are manufactured
and probably .05% of those drawings get made. It is important for
all in the jewellery industry, designers, production control
managers, quality control department and owners to go through
formal training on the bench. Students who have done this bench
jewellery program quietly confess that to me they seem to know more
than their bosses/ husbands / fathers and fathers in law on account
of the 1000 hours that they have sat on the bench. It is critical
that the industry hires trained professionally qualified persons. I
agree with Crystal, formal training will not ensure brilliance but
it will definitely ensure a standard proficiency. Also the time
spent in teaching on the job can perhaps be used more productively.
Jonathan’s perspective is definitely biased. The problems he
has mentioned about attitude and other stuff are prevalent in all
other programs too be it a student from a B school, accountancy or
fashion yet today no one would dare to enter into these industries
without some kind of formal education. The answer to your question
is that there is a crying need to have formally trained gold
smiths.

Shanu, That is a common question around Independents offering
services. I'll give you my biased opinion.;) These are sweeping
statements from my own scars and triumphs as both a bench jeweler
and an employer with 28 years in the trade. So take a pinch of
salt... The best smiths have had diverse work experiences and
worked for more than one fussy nit-picking master. You nit-pickers
know who you are.:) They have to have their own inner sense of
excellence in their workmanship and a critical eye to know when
it's right. A sense of pride and ownership or accountability adds
to valuable performance. No one person can show you every angle of
attack when dealing with the various complex problems in repairs or
construction and production. Repetition also helps train the body
to move efficiently. You will not get that in a classroom
atmosphere. Every apprentice I've ever had, that came from an
academic training program had to be deprogramed from thinking they
knew the right way to skin a cat. It's one thing to make a pretty
box that takes all semester to make but now how do you produce it
so that you can amortize the cost of design. No school I've heard
of will give you that most important and necessary information. One
of my local university's teacher of jewelry arts has told their
students that "the only career they will have will be in
teaching...so they better go ahead and go for their master degree."
That teacher , I'm clear, had never been in a real work
environment. Where do you learn how to get the channel band
finished that your customers needs by 5pm on friday, when it's
4:35pm and the stones are a tenth of a millimeter too large for the
setting and the girdles will touch? I'm just pulling that off the
top of my head but I hope you get the picture. Schools have a
vested interest in the perception of their value so they can sell
classes. It's a business that has no one accrediting their
performance. I've had two graduates from one of our modern day
"master bench jewelers" schools, that spent some thousand dollars
for their training and they weren't worth the time it took me to
fix all the jobs they fubared. I can handle arrogance as long as
they can back it up with performance. It's the pretentiousness that
you have to sift through and avoid. You can tell I'm here to make
friends with the academics.;p Self-learners can workout well like
yours because of all the trial and error but there is a possibility
of tunnel vision unless they can think outside of the box. It will
help you if you to have a clue when reading a resume'. Don't
believe common interpretations of resumes'. Just because somebody
hopped around doesn't mean they're unreliable or uncommitted. They
may be learning new techniques and furthering their training or
perhaps looking for the right home for their talents....that was
me.;) Staying in one place may mean that they figured out how to
hide well. I had one like that. He could size a ring and fix a
chain and that was all his tricks in a nutshell. Now for
compensation: The main problem for keeping talent is that there is
such a low ceiling for earnings when you work for someone as a
bench jeweler. Eventually they hit that ceiling and look at their
prospects of the future. While you're building a business with
equity, that they are helping you to build, they hold nothing at
the end of their career. This is not an indictment, it's just the
facts. The days where a bench jeweler can work his life away for
someone else and have something to retire on are gone. How do we
determine compensation? Context is decisive. What is the value of a
human life? In life, all we really have is time. It's the line
between the two numbers on your tombstone. We treat it is as a
negotiable commodity. Apparently some lives are worth less than
others. That's why we find it acceptable to pay our people as
little as we can get away with. Matter of fact, we've shifted much
of our industry to countries where life is valued around a dollar a
day or less. Nice. Pay your people what you can sleep with. You
know how much money they make for you, if you keep your numbers.
Give them a piece of the action, if they're worth keeping. After
all, we're not going to build an edifice to our glory, are we? At
the end of our days, our life will be measured by the lives we've
touched and made a difference in. p.s. I'll bet the laser training
was not free but actually inside of the cost of the laser. They are
invaluable tools nowadays and you don't have to spend $30k to have
one that will do the work you need. A good smith will aid you in
doing custom design pieces with larger stones & color. It
shifts the customer relationship when they see the hands that made
their rings. It makes it very personal and moves it away from
commoditization. I'll take a school of hard knocks jeweler, any
day, over school trained. Good luck finding the right smith for
your new shop. I'm sure you'll find the right one.

Formal training is much like a college degree… it doe not
ensure that the person is well trained but only that they have been
exposed to and should have a minimum proficiency in a variety of
(taught) subjects. Both the school and ultimately the person make
the difference, in what is really learned. Thus formal training
comes down to you paying for a perception of assurance, not in
guaranteed excellence but in the student having achieved at least a
measurable minimum. … whether that schooling / standard even
taught the details of work you need (example: laser welding or 3D
design, etc) … only you can judge.