We love our workshop, and we love the creative world that we are lucky enough to work in! Our modern handcrafted jewellery is the result of a wonderful merging of traditional and contemporary goldsmithing skills which are applied to pared back, clean designs.
Let us take you on a guided tour!
Starting with how our place of work looks and feels overall, it’s fascinating to think that a jewellery workshop used to look like this busy scene on the left, and now jewellery can be made in a relatively small and tidy area like ours, as you see in the image on the right! That said, many of the methods and tools that were used centuries ago are still being used by jewellers today, while more cutting edge mechanisms are employed where appropriate.
The centre of all activity is the workbench, with a wooden benchpeg in the middle. Under the workbench is a tray that can be pulled out to catch pieces of metal and dust as they fall away from the piece that is being made. As jewellery making involves a lot of different small tools, the drawers and shelves that are built into the structure of the workbench are vital as there are so many items to store and take out to use as necessary.
The goldsmith’s line of sight is very important. Sometimes the maker may need to sit relatively low down in relation to workbench in order to be able to see what they are doing while, at other times, they may need to be positioned above the piece of jewellery, looking down on a specific aspect of their work. As a result, a bench stool with adjustable height is key to having the best angle and most comfortable seated position at all times. It’s very possible that the height of a bench stool may be adjusted hundreds of times a day!
The surface of the workbench and the benchpeg get tested to the max as work is carried out and, depending on a what is being made, many, many different tools are used, sometimes for the tiniest of details! It is the norm that at certain points during the day, and before heading home, a concentrated period of time is spent putting everything away, back in its place, so that a clean start can be made on the next piece of jewellery.
Jewellery is fiddly, and jewellery is fantastic! Keep an eye out for our next “Behind the Scenes” blog which will move through from a bird’s-eye view of our workshop and dive on into the intricacies of it all – pliers, calipers, metals, findings, drills, files, gemstones, rolling mills and more – the works!!
Bespoke – Simply Beautiful Birdies