Career Options Jewellery Making

For Further Details Contact


AESERA  Jewellery DESIGNING ACADEMY

No 144/74, Eskay building, 3rd floor, 
Greams Road, Thousand Lights
Chennai,  Tamil Nadu
India,
Mobile: +91-9444100081,+91-9840689781

seshu.gopal@jewelrydesignacademy.com

     Career options in Jewellery Making

A career in jewellery designing is a rather lucrative profession today. India is the largest consumer of gold in the world, with revenues currently estimated at over $13 billion. The country also consumes 20 percent of world gold consumption.

     The jewellery designing industry in a fast growing industry and employs around 1.3 million people. So if you are of the artistic bent of mind, you have an interesting career option here, waiting to be discovered. Interestingly, jewellery design is not just for professionals, there are a large number of short term courses available in all major cities of the country, and all kinds of people, from software professionals looking for a stress buster, to housewives wanting to channel their creativity are doing short term jewellery design courses.

 If you don’t plan to turn jewellery design into a profession you can still do a course and create some fantastic personalized gifts for your friends. Incase you haven’t already noted, there is all kinds of jewellery you can design, not just metal and stone.

Today, jewellery is being made from a large list of materials including, clay, paper, plastic and fabric. The range of materials that can be used and the huge scope for creativity is making jewellery design an attractive field to make ones career in. Some Career Options in Jewellery Design

Goldsmith:

A goldsmith can work with any material, knows construction, can work for someone else making jewellery or for oneself.

A Custom/Special Order Jeweller:

may be employed and self employed and work directly with the public or within a trade shop. A custom order jeweller creates one-of-a-kind individualized work for a client. This is a job which combines skills in goldsmithing/wax/model making, design, rendering, psychology, pricing, selling and negotiating.
   

Artist Jewellers:

 are those who enjoy working by themselves. There are wide open niches in conceptual work and high end work. A Fashion Jeweller: is a person who designs and makes jewellery and accessories for the fashion industry. It requires a flair for PR , design, audience understanding and good business sense.

Designer:

a designer designs jewellery through drawings, models or even wax originals. May be employed by a company or self employed. Closely linked to jewellery design is the manufacturing of jewellery. You can choose to either graduate into manufacturing by bringing to life your designs or link up with a manufacturer, who will reproduce your design.

 Career options in jewellery manufacturer include

A Manufacturer:  

May be anyone from someone running a small production to mass production, from service work for others to marketing one’s designs online.

 Crafts Jewellery Maker:

A maker who markets through craft fairs and gallery-stores, usually with a line of hand-made, unique or low production run pieces.

Production Bench Worker:

A goldsmith who specializes in production work, anything from running a punch press, to repetitive hand work.

 Repair person:

specializes in repairs. Often the best way of starting and learning jewellery skills and the basis of many a successful jewellery business.

Stonesetter:

a good setter earns very well and is well respected.

Store Owner/Manager:

This is where the income lies highest, at the retail end of the chain. It requires good business skills and hard work, commitment and a great deal of money to do. Many owners however came to this point from goldsmithing bench jobs originally.
   

Specialized careers related to Jewellery making

Gemologist/Appraiser:

Usually an employed position. Training and equipment costs can be high. Diamonds are a specialized sub-section of gemology.

Hand Engraver:

This profession has almost gone. It is not hard to learn, merely requiring a great deal of practice. A good hand engraver can make a lot of money in service work for the industry because of its rarity.

 Model maker:

a goldsmith specializing in making original metal models. Often an employed position it is the highest level of goldsmithing in many ways.

Silversmith:

another almost extinct career but because of that some good options for independent service or original work, requires good marketing skills and training in Art School. Other career options include Caster, Plater, Polisher and Faculty  Pre-requisite for career in Jewellery designing .

 Some of the premier institutes in India provide diploma courses in Jewellery designing to those completing their graduation in any stream. Many institutes offer short-term courses after completing X or XII standards as well. The various types of courses would give essential information on colour coding schemes, polishing and finishing, drawing techniques and ornament making and designing etc.

The course duration could vary from 3 months to 3 years. Jewellery designing institutes are now using computerized programmes like Rhino, Gemvision Matrix, Jewel CAD, etc. This allows students to easily made and store designs and produce them on demand. Jewellery design obviously has a huge potential in India, the internet has also made things easy for those wanting to launch their own business.

One can begin selling their products online from their very home and even use the internet to exhibit their designs and produce on demand.

Jewellery Manufacturing

AESERA  Jewellery DESIGNING ACADEMY

No 144/74, Eskay building, 3rd floor,
Greams Road, Thousand Lights
Chennai,  Tamil Nadu
India,
Mobile: +91-9444100081,+91-9840689781

seshu.gopal@jewelrydesignacademy.com

A piece of jewellery begins as a figment of the imagination. It takes years of training for a designer to translate this thought onto a design platform. He has to learn the intricacies of jewelry design and drawing and have an understanding of all of the various precious metals and stones that are included in the product. A designer also requires an understanding of how to balance various metals with gemstones to create a viable product. Also, creating trendy or value-driven designs requires extensive industry and market knowledge. A skilled craftsman with many years of experience transforms a two-dimensional drawing into a three-dimensional wax model. Many varieties of wax exist, each developed for a particular application. Some wax is designed for carving, while others are cut from sheets, and are heated and fashioned by numerous methods to define shapes and details in the wax. Lost-wax investment casting was established in the early 1900s in the dental industry. It soon became the leading method of creating reproductions because of its increased accuracy over existing methods. It soon evolved into a process for jewelry, where it has grown to be the dominant form of mass production. The goal of lost-wax investment casting is to create wax copies that allow mass production of items identical to a handmade original. It begins with a piece of metal jewelry called the model. In order to make a rubber mold, one must cover the metal model with a solid layer of unvulcanized rubber and subject it to pressure and heat. Then, using a very sharp knife the rubber mold is dissected and the original model is removed. Molten wax is then injected into the resulting rubber mold – a process that can be repeated to produce mass numbers of the original model. Next, the wax models are placed on a sprue. The term "sprue" generally refers to a wax rod, or series of rods, that secure a wax model to a specifically configured rubber or plastic base. Once the waxes have been securely attached to the sprue base using sprue rods, a stainless steel flask is carefully inserted inside the outer lip of the sprue base, so as to surround the waxes while still leaving, minimally, a quarter inch space between the wax and the inside of the flask. Investment, a material that resembles plaster of Paris, is poured around the wax models to completely fill the open spaces. After the investment has set, the sprue base is removed and the object is placed inside of a kiln. This process is called the burn out. The temperature of the kiln is slowly raised to an excess of one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, completely “burning out” the wax to leave a mold. Once the investment is thoroughly cured, the temperature is brought down to a specific temperature and allowed to settle before pouring in the liquidized metal. As a general rule, the greater the detail and the finer the areas the metal must fill, the hotter the flask needs to be in order to allow the metal to completely fill the voids where the wax was before the metal freezes. Once the flask has cooled, the investment is removed, leaving a rough version of the original design. Although lost wax casting is still the dominant form of mass production, new technologies, such as rapid prototyping, offer future promise to reduce manufacturing time and costs associated with the lost wax method. Now that a raw piece of jewelry has been removed from the kiln, there are various processes required to give the piece a finished look. The goal of the final steps of finishing is to achieve a bright, mirror-like polish that is free of any visible abrasions, dents or irregularities. The polishing stage requires many different types of wheels that are used for particular applications, such as corners, flat surfaces, and difficult to reach areas. Polishing is the final abrasion or smoothing of karat gold before buffing. It leaves a dull finish and removes visible traces of sanding or other abrasive procedures. Next, lapping is a step in the polishing process for karat gold jewelry that has sharp corners or flat surfaces. Lastly, buffing creates the mirror-like finish and causes little-to-no metal to be removed. It is the final step in the professional finishing process. Adding gemstones and diamonds to the finished casting is a very delicate process. The art of setting requires years of training. An accomplished setter is adept at protecting the gemstone while securing it tightly into the ring. There are multiple types of settings that secure the stone in the finished casting. Diamonds, for instance, may be set in seven different types of settings, each displaying the diamond(s) in different ways. Bar: Metal bars hold the loose diamonds in a channel-like setting. Bezel: The metal is formed tofit around the diamond, cupping it into place. Channel: A row of smalldiamond stones are set in a groove in the diamond rings. Chevron: V-shaped prongs thatusually hold a marquise or princess-cut diamond for solitaire style rings. Invisible: Diamond set in agroove without visible prongs. Pave: Tiny stones are embeddedto look like the piece is paved with loose diamonds. Prong: Several prongs hold thediamonds to let light pass through without interference.

The final stage of manufacturing includes the finishing touches that assure the customer a quality product. Rhodium or gold plating may be added to the product to enhance its attractiveness, followed by a thorough cleaning process. After adding a trademark symbol to the finished product to identify its origins, the product goes through a rigorous quality control process. This process is in place to ensure that there are no scratches or pits in the metal, no broken or loose stones in the setting, and no rough edges on the prongs. Once these qualifications are met, the piece of jewelry is ready for shipping.