Jeweler's former lives

Don - Civil Structural Engineer / Jeweler

Louise - Teacher / Weaver / Website Developer / Jeweler

http://www.fine-wire-jewelry.com/spectrum

This is a great thread. I was a technical sales engineer for AT&T. I
helped design some of the first automated 800 calling systems in the
Boston area.

Leanne
Leanne Elliott Soden
Pieces of Class
http://www.piecesofclass.net

My former was spent as a triage registered nurse. I was also a field
nurse traveling with the life force helicopters and ambulances.

Sharlene

I had been a Home and office Interior Decorator, set designer,
costume designer, adult ed teacher, wood worker, and more. But
nothing fulfills me (aside from mothering) like being a jeweler. For
the past 13 years I have been a bench jeweler for a local store.
There have been times when I have done Decorating jobs on the side.
Last year I made allot more money decorating than I did as a jeweler.
I gave myself a good talking to about leaving the bench. I even gave
my notice. But in the end, I just couldnā€™t do it. I swear I am
addicted to this.

Julia

Another psychologist here, ABD (all but dissertation.) I had become
disenchanted with the whole field and taken some time off to have
children, and I found I was looking for specific pieces of jewelry
that I could envision but nobody was making. I realized that I
already knew what they looked like, now all I had to do was learn to
make them. That was almost thirty years ago, and I havenā€™t run out
of ideas yet.

Janet Kofoed
http://users.rcn.com/kkofoed

two BAā€™sā€¦Math secondary Ed, Psychologyā€¦have worked with teaching
Math and English, and textbook production. Other jobs were jewelry
related.

Jeanne
Jeannius Designs

I had the usual gottagetajob jobs of youth like cook and night
auditor, and then technical writer, addictions treatment counselor,
occupational therapist, hospital administrator. The last non jewelry
work I did was a few web development contracts about 5 years ago.

I am fascinated by the the frequency of IT and psychology in the
backgrounds of jewelers on this thread. Iā€™ve always done all the
software development I need for my business and wondered if I could
make a living from it. I also worked years in the mental health
field.

But Iā€™m happier making jewelry than coding or counseling.

Mark Defrates
www.markdefrates.com

OK, Sandra, Iā€™ll join inā€¦

I have always been an artist/craftsperson, selling what I made, but
it was never my main source of income. And I pretty much mean ALWAYS,
like when I was 10 years old & selling things Iā€™d made, showing
neighbors and friends a little catalog Iā€™d also created. Back when I
had a ā€œregularā€ job, I was both a marketing project manager,
designing & managing marketing campaigns for mid-range IBM computers,
and the companyā€™s in-house applications programmer. Yes, itā€™s
actually a very creative thing to do! Due to an international move, I
stopped working there, and now Iā€™m what I like to call a work-at-home
Mom. I have two little ones (1 & 5), and while theyā€™re napping or at
ā€œschoolā€ (or when my Hubby graciously allows me to escape into the
basement) I wear my artist hat, working on and growing my own
business. I am mainly a metalsmith, but I do other things as well. I
suppose my training was both in business and art (college major &
minor, respectively) so that has been a great help in what I really
wanted to do with my life- just what Iā€™m doing now! :slight_smile:

Lisa
Designs by Lisa Gallagher
www.designsbylisag.com

I was in the computer industry for 25 years as a software developer
and consultant. I still do some computer work part-time, to finance
my passions. I also paint, draw, and do a lot of digital photography.
I moved some files off my laptop the other day and found I had over
10,000 images from the last three years !

Brian Corll
Vassar Jewelers

From the number of responses to this it might actually be more
interesting to hear about those of us who didnā€™t have previous jobs.
How many of the rest of you started working on jewelry at 15 and
never stopped (as I did)?

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140

1 Like

I canā€™t resist responding to the challenge! I am not really a
"jeweler," rather just an amateur with a life-long passion for gems.
In my case, I am a retired Naval Officer, with an educational
background as a mechanical engineer. I began my 54 years of interest
in gemstones and jewelry during my first year as a geology major at
the University of Wyoming, when I expanded from collecting minerals
to polishing opals from Mexico and Australia (no machinery
required). Within a few years I had decided to make mountings from
sterling silver and gold (while I was a midshipman at the U. S. Naval
Academy, of all places!). I also polished a couple of dozen star
sapphires, including a flawless blue-gray oval from a crystal
fragment I picked out of a parcel of gem gravel from Ceylon (now Sri
Lanka). I mounted it in a carved white gold plug I put on the
engagement ring I presented to my fiancee. During a visit to Brazil
in 1957 I was granted a tour of an extraordinary private collection
of museum quality gem minerals, and I picked up some cut stones for
my own collection.

My ā€œbiblesā€ have been a couple of fine books by the inimitable late
John Sinkankas. When I lived in San Diego, I made a few forays into
the California back country, collecting crystals from pegmatites at
Ramona and Pala, mking use of from Sinkankas. Later I
collected benitoite, jadeite, and other minerals in the Clear Creek
district while I was earning my Masterā€™s Degree at Monterey,
California.

Now that I am completely retired (in 2001) from the field of ship
engineering and construction, I have further expanded my interest in
lapidary to include faceting. I have since faceted several hundred
stones, using many materials ranging from almandine to zircon, and
in completed sizes from .1 to 15 carats. I hope to acquire larger and
finer gem rough for faceting, but the resources for that will
require disposing of some of the many excess tourmalines, garnets,
spinels and peridots I have accumulated.

I have also expanded my metalworking toolkit to include a flexshaft
machine. I am beginning to expand my jewelry work to include
higher-end materials like 18K and 22K gold. Oh, and I am entirely
self-taught, mainly because I had no choice, as I simply didnā€™t have
thetime or opportunity. As a result, I have only the most basic
knowledge of goldsmithing techniques. But I have set stones using
bezels, and prongs, and I have even done bead setting of small melee
size blue sapphires. I now have a new ā€œbible,ā€ this one from Tim
McCreight. I do only constructed work at this time, and I make
jewelry mostly just for fun.

-Dick Davies
In the snow in Old Virginia

This is an interesting thread.

Having always been attracted to other peoples fine jewelry, and
never being able to afford it, I started stringing pearls and heishi
in Jr. High School for myself and friends. Then promptly forgot how
much I enjoyed it. I went on to get a double B.A. in Philosophy and
Religious Studies after years in a Classics program suffering over
Greek and Latin. Cocktail waitressing in NM, waiting for a graduate
program to start, I couldnā€™t let go of Voltaire, and ended up on a
small island off the coast of Maine as a Jane-of -many -trades.
House Painter, waitress, librarian, carpenter, septic pumper, road
maintenance, non-profit director, EMT, transport business owner,
gardener, grant writer, stern man (lobstering), sea sampling (DMR),
baker, volunteer fire fighter, computer techie, 6th-grade-reading-
comprehension-test-question-writer, all while in my spare time I was
taking classes and reading metalsmith books. After my first
successful silver granulation piece, I knew I was hooked for life. I
still have a transport business to support my jewelry habit (gold is
so expensive!), and I get to wear the jewelry I always wanted to
wear. Another score for liberal arts educationā€¦-Susan

Susan McDonough Jewelry

Interesting. There seems to be a lot of IT/engineering types here. I
have been an artist of one kind or another all my life. Iā€™m a
portrait artist, seamstress, and Iā€™ve designed houses. Now, I work
part time as a graphic artist/CADD operator/IT computer geek. I
always wanted to pursue the art in one form or another all my life,
but in this area the computer stuff pays the bills.

Lisa

Graphic Designer/fine artist. 

Our local guild, the Chicago Metal Arts Guild has 4 current/former
graphic artists, that I know of! And I have had at least two as
students in metalsmithing classes.

Elaine
Elaine Luther
Metalsmith, Certified PMC Instructor
http://www.CreativeTextureTools.com ā„¢
Hard to Find Tools for Metal Clay

I have been an Audio Visual Technician for 27 years and I am
currently attempting to become a silversmith/artclay jewelry
designer.

Don Brown, Elign Design.

When you get to be 75, you can really look back - I was a commercial
artist, then a realtor, stock broker, financial planner and for
kicks went to work for a hi-tech company when I was 66 just to prove
you could get a job after you were 50. But through it all I painted
in gouache and acrylics, put in 25 years in a co-op gallery with
painting, then took up metals - and Iā€™ve never picked up my paint
brushes again - 16 years and counting. And yesterday attended a
forum on aging which emphasized that creative endeavors continue to
build brain cells and utilize both hemispheres of the brain
simultaneously - so keep creating and building more brain cells.

Kay

Entomologist (M.S.) ! =)

I was headed for a career in academia-- genetic fingerprinting type
stuff, until I got sidetracked by motherhood and bright sparklies.

Michelle

In my former life I was a lab technician in brain research. I truly
enjoyed the work until I ran into a strongly unionized situation
where the work hours were rigid and tea breaks obligatory.

I later read a pyscology research article that concluded that people
who had been raised on farms or with parents that ran their own
business had difficulty fitting into a rigid work schedule.

Lois

My former livesā€“wow that was a long time ago. I have a Ph.D in
English lit, with Philosophy as my related field. Taught college
level lit, then my career took an abrupt turn, and I worked in
Hospital Administration, providing the liaison between the hospital
Researchers and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda,
Washington. Long story about the switch in careers.

It was one of those marvelously unexpected turns of events. I knew
my way around funding agencies in Washington DC, and the hospital
which is a teaching hospital affiliated with Univ. of Southern Cal.
needed an academic person with my background to jockey back and forth
between the hospital and Washington.

For relief from all the high pressure of the job, I made jewelry,
and did enameling. This was my quiet time. I would enter a deep
meditative state when creating, and would find a center of peaceā€¦

When I retired, I took every class and workshop that I could find,
(still do) and am now making jewelry and enamels, and love every
minute of it.

Alma

I worked in the Bio Medical field for 8 years testing and developing
polymer ion selective electrodes for a direct dip blood analyzer for
measuring the bodyā€™s electrolytes before surgical procedures in the
OR. Changes in the companyā€™s economic structure, i.e. downsized, I
became a laboratory manager for two professors, one professor
emeritus and 12 postdocs at the Harvard Biological Laboratories.

One Halloween night I attended a party where some drunken idiot
decided to flick his Bic on my costume. Ended up in the hospital for
a month with 30 percent body burns, skin grafts and 356 staples on my
legs. Yes, I counted everyone as they took them out.

Took a jewelry class to deal with the fire behind and put it in
front. This was 1990.

Spent 3 years at adult ed jewelry classes, then applied to art
school. Graduated in 1997, and with the help of Orchid who gave
Metalwerx their name, the school was launched in 1998.

Yā€™all know the rest.

-k

M E T A L W E R X
School for Jewelry and the Metalarts
50 Guinan St.
Waltham, MA 02451
781 891 3854
www.metalwerx.com