About education in jewelry
I've been following the very interesting 'titanium welding' discussion on
keeping jewelry techniques to yourself. I'd like to hook in a bit with a
question about education. Actually, from the discussion I got the idea that
short courses in jewelry are frowned upon. Also, I read Peter's writing on
education at http://users.lanminds.com/~drewid/pwr_education.html.
I'm very keen on rolling into the field of jewelry making / goldsmithing,
but have little idea on where to start. Currently I'm doing a beginner's
course in jewelry making at a college here in Singapore, where I live at
the moment. It's very good to finally work with the tools and techniques
that I've been reading about for so much, but I find the course too
superficial and not intensive enough. Well ok, that's what they advertised
so I can't complain. In Singapore there's no other options regarding
education.
Now on the other hand, the idea of doing a 3 year full time bachelor's
degree is totally out of the question. I've got a MSc in a very different
field already (software engineering/electronics) and the idea of doing
another 3 years fulltime gives me the creeps. It would also feel like I'd
go back in life, instead of progressing.
So I've been looking around, and found a few options:
- I can just read lots of books (and newsgroups :) and start with jewelry
making as a serious hobby.
- I could do a half-year (or 1 year?) course at a well-known academy such
as Alan Revere's. Very expensive though at $25k or so, though if you think
of what you will gain it's not even that terrible perhaps. I don't know of
any other institutes that do these sort of 'short' courses.
The problem is also that even though I'd like to switch working fields at
some point, it's also a big scary step to give up my current job to try a
new field. But I feel in my current field of software engineering I've been
totally ignoring my main skill / passion for years, which is doing small
scale precise mechanical work where good dexterity is required (my other
interest and hobby is watchmaking :)
Can someone give some sort of advise/input that might help me? Is anyone
familiar with institutions such as Revere's perhaps?
Fashion Institute of Technology has an intensive one year course. If you have
some of the basic skills you will be admitted to it. A majority of the
teachers are very good. This maybe worth looking into and since this is a state
institution the tuition is reasonable.