Jewellery Design Courses in Italy

Metallo Nobile, Florence:
The school was estabished in 1998 and is located in the old part of Florence. There are classrooms for drawing and designing both by hand and by computer, and a large. fully-equipped workshops with individual professional workbenches, and the instruments and tools needed for the various specialisations as well as machinery for complete cycle casting. Courses are available for a minimum of one month and a maximum of a year and are aimed at those are newcomers to the craft and also those who already have some basic knowledge and wish to gain specialisation. Lessons are morning and afternoon every day from Monday to Friday. Lessons are held in Italian but we have a teaching assistant who can help students when they do not understand.

Jewellery crafting (basic and advanced)
Study of the characteristics and behaviour of metals during working - laminating, wiredrawing, soldering. Constructing a jewel: the various components and their combinations, uniting the parts (soldering or mechanical jointing).

Modelling in hot and cold wax, in plasticine, hot and cold silicon casting and rudiments of casting: rings with different kinds of shank, preparation of collets for cabochon and faceted stones, earrings, pendants and necklaces with jointed clasp mechanisms, construction of hinged joints, tunnelled pins with two-pin clasps, bracelets with snap-clasps.

Finishing rendered pieces, honing, cleaning and polishing. Various kinds of jewellery enhancing processes. Practice in stone-setting, and engraving.

Jewellery design and technical drawing
Technical training and creative aspects at the conceptual stage of the jewel. Correct representation of the idea, education in taste and aesthetics through analysis of shape, development of creative skills. Analysis of technical constraints in rendering an idea through limits imposed by wearability and the client's target market: designing one-off pieces or in series, modular jewels created in large and small series.

Material technology and industrial and handcraft working, project economic analysis. Designing a set: necklace, earrings, brooch, bracelet and ring. Each project involves analyzing and selecting materials and a decorative technique. Graphics are drawn in pencil, water colors and tempera. There will also be lessons of computer-aided jewel design and the basics of gemology.

Wax modelling
Creation of sculpted pieces for jewellery. The various kinds of wax and their ductility in modelling, the techniques of so-called 'lost-wax' casting, preparing wax and ways of rendering it more or less malleable, the equipment for modelling it and the weight relationship between wax prototype and finished product.

Enamelling
The various kinds of enamel and their classification, enamelling techniques and selecting suitable metals, the working tools, the timing of firing and the finishing process.

Casting
The various kinds of wax, the techniques of 'lost-wax' casting, the tools and machinery of the complete process: from modelling to hot casting in silicon moulds and reproducing the waxes using injectors. Cleaning and finishing the piece rendered.

Engraving
Preparation and proper use of the working tools, the behaviour of metals and their characteristics during the engraving processes.

Stone setting
Function and correct use of the tools necessary for the profession of stone setter, working techniques in cutting, blocking the stone, enhancing the finished product, and fundamentals of gemmology.

Chiselling / Embossing
Embossing and chiselling are techniques that in gold work are generally used together: the first is done on the back of a sheet of metal ("verso") on which a drawing or design has been traced, while the second is carried out on the front side ("recto") of the same sheet of metal.

Embossing is an antique technique by which a drawing or design is reproduced in relief by deforming a sheet of metal without heating it: the sheet of metal is secured to a mobile support whose surface is made of a malleable substance and the work is carried out on the reverse side of the sheet, (verso) with mallets and rounded-tip punches, utilizing the malleability of the metal or alloy.

Chiselling, also an antique technique, is a complimentary procedure which follows the embossing process, as it is used to carry out the finishing touches on the reverse side of the sheet of metal by mallets and chisels or punches similar to the previous ones but smaller and with different shapes: on the front of the metal sheet (recto) which has been shaped by the embossing, the contours of the drawing or decorative pattern are refinished and new ones which are smaller and more precise are added by light tapping of the chisel.