Jeweler's former lives

Jewelry Discussion
141

ok- made my 1st piece (hammered copper ring which i saw and
thought" I can do that") at around 10 yrs old (yes I’ve always been a
late starter), always drawn, always been into geology and collecting
rocks,minerals and small bits of metal - (1st boyfriend was a sheet
metal worker and I still have lots of little bits of cut out metal
and wire he brought to show me), never thought of making a career
out of it until had an epiphany at an art jewellery exhibition-
that’s when I realised jewellery could be interesting as well as “
just” pretty.

worked in - microbiology, haematology, graphic design, then finally
got here :-),

cheers to all, Christine in Sth Australia

142 
when I was a lad. Although I was very young at the time, seeing
his work and his studio made a lasting impression on me. I think
that is probably where my trajectory into goldsmithing began.

This reminded me – I saw metalsmiths working in Spain, doing the
gold inlay onto a black background. What is that black stuff? Anyway,
that was the first time I saw people doing real work, close up like
that.

At the time I was in high school and had been making jewelry since
junior high by taking jewelry apart and putting it back together in
new ways, adding stuff, and using fishing swivels.

Didn’t take my first metalsmithing class til college. They had it had
my high school, but I didn’t know. (it was a really, really big
school.)

Elaine

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

143

I’m enjoying this thread. Like some of you, I have come to making
jewelry in mid-life, after a circuitous path that led me into work as
the finance manager for the state chapter of a major environmental
nonprofit organization. A combination of burnout and a small
inheritance allowed me to leave that job a couple of years ago and
pursue jewelry pretty much full-time.

I developed an interest in geology as a kid but switched to
broadcasting by the time I got to college. I ended up with a B.S. in
broadcasting and then one in natural sciences. I did some radio
announcing, a little television work (audio, editing, master
control), and a smattering of Park Service jobs. Then I zigged into
secretarial and meeting planning work, followed by a stint as a
naturalist at an outdoor science school.

Twenty years ago, I had taken up handweaving and had a huge
8-harness Gilmore loom, on which I made a variety of things including
a set of placemats I’m still using today. I started making jewelry as
a hobby after my car was broken into at a trailhead and my favorite
beadwork earrings were stolen. I decided to learn how to make beaded
earrings (the kind using tiny seed beads woven in brick stitch, with
fringe) and taught myself out of a book.

A few years ago my husband and I took a weekend welding workshop at
the local community college, and I noticed that the college offered
metalworking classes. Having realized that I couldn’t charge enough
for beadwork to pay myself a decent wage, I thought I should learn
how to use precious metals.

Even though I got started a bit late, I like to joke that making
jewelry is in my blood; my maternal great grandfather was a jeweler
(albeit after a train accident ended his railroad career), and my
paternal ancestors migrated from Ohio to California to mine gold near
French Gulch.

Sande

144

Some of my first memories are of made stuff. When at the advanced
age of 16 I took a jewellery class to replace a high school study
hall. Other than a few student summer jobs, grass cutting, house
painting, drafting, I’ve been rather focused. Art school in metal and
jewellery (fun and I did learn a little), 25 years of trade benches
(not always fun, but I HAD to learn just to survive and eat).
Business decisions far out of my control gave me an opportunity to
try to convert my home studio output into a sole income source.

Many black days and memories mixed in with the good ones, but so far
the light at the end of the tunnel still doesn’t appear to be a
train; no real regrets from this lifer.

Jeff
Demand Designs
Analog/Digital Modelling & Goldsmithing
http://www.gmavt.net/~jdemand

145

Ok, I’ll bite. It is a very cool thread.

I’m still a hobbyist, but I learn a lot from this forum, and the
input of the pros here have given me a lot of confidence in
advancing my skills.

Like a lot of people who have posted to this thread, I come from a
technical background (one of those common threads that surprised
me…).

I’m an electrician/electronic controls technician with 25+ years in
the field.

I am a leather worker, for nearly as long, who branched into
decorative metalwork, lapidary, and organic material carving to make
the hardware for my leather pieces. I consider myself an amateur
historian who focuses on pre-industrial processes in this area
(Yeah, I’m a medieval re-enactor…)

One day, I’ll feel comfortable enough to do more than the occasional
commissioned pieces. Until then, I’ll just keep plugging along.

Ron Charlotte – Gainesville, FL

146

I am really enjoying this thread so here is contribution.

B.S. Physics, M.S. Chemistry, M.S. Materials Science

I spent ten years selling souvenirs to tourist in a local town to
pay my way through college. After completing school I took a job as a
scientist for the government, which is still my day job.

I started collecting rocks and doing some simple lapidary work in my
early teens. I eventually needed something to do with all those
rocks & gems so I started to try to make jewelry. Luckily a jeweler
across the street from where I worked was going out of business and
leaving town, so he gave his spare torch to a mutual fried who then
passed it to me. I made various simple jewelry for sale at craft
bazaars when I was in college to make some extra money, but I haven’t
sold much in the past ten years. Now I am working to build an
inventory and to find a good outlet so I can start to sell my work
again.

Scott

147

Hello all,

I have been busy and am just catching up on my Orchid digests. What
an interesting idea here! In my other lives:

I was a fine art major, and along the way of helping to pay the costs
I worked in a dental lab. I became a pretty fair crown & bridge tech
and persued that, after getting out of school, for about 10 years. I
was always crazy about horses and wound up buying a couple to show.
Well, other people liked the way my horses looked, and I was asked if
I would train their horses…that led to a very interesting career
for most of my adult life. During all those years I used my casting
and waxing knowledge to bolster my creative self and started to make
jewelry as a hobby. I now still work a bit in the Thoroughbred world,
but mostly make cast and fabricated jewelry with equines as a theme.
With eager anticipation, I am going to take my first engraving course
in July. Learning, like life, is a journey…never a destination!

Gail

148

Wow! I feel replying to all the other posters on this thread and
chatting about their pasts, what a fascinating mix of people.

Me…

Started out as a governess at 17 on a sheep station in the north of
New South Wales. Possibly the best year of my life.

Returned to the city and did a secretarial course.

Then spent many years alternating between office work and (later)
jewellery making but finished my office career in 2005 after 17 years
working for the Royal Adelaide Show, at the end in the position of
Desktop Publisher and Risk Management Administrator (take a breath,
it was a mouthful).

Stopped everything to care for my dad who passed away at the end of
2005 and now really wanting to make it with my jewellery.

Cheers, Renate
www.renatesommerjewellery.com.au

149

I started at 15 as an apprentice but to make ends meet or to make
extra cash for tools and gems when needed, I have welded custom
order bicycle frames, sold sticky buns at a bakery in the Pike Place
Market, and danced (fully clothed) in a cage at a punk club. Girls
just wanna’ have fun.

Nanz Aalund
Associate Editor / Art Jewelry magazine
21027 Crossroads Circle / Waukesha WI 53187-1612
262.796.8776 ext.228

150

This is a fun thread! Is anyone tabulating responses?

My life as a “jeweler” started at age 4, pebble hunting on the
beaches and gluing my treasures to findings and selling them!

Many jewelry kits later (I remember a kit called “Rings and Things”
that I loved!), I had the opportunity as a high school senior to sit
in a jewelry studio with a mentor for a few weeks. I soldered my
first joints and set my first stones with her.

On to college at The University of Illinois, where I majored in
graphic design, thinking that I’d make jewelry on the side, and pay
the bills with a graphics job. Took jewelry classes at U of I., and
at a community college in town, as well.

Three years later, decided that graphics was not my bag, and focused
entirely on jewelry, setting up my own studio in my home.

Had several side jobs as well, including seamstress in a leather
shop, was a hand weaver, made and sold bicycle touring products,then
made portrait porcelain dolls, was a wood carver, and then made the
final leap into full time studio jewelry. Been there ever since, and
still love it, every minute of every day!

(Raised two awesome daughters in the mean time, the oldest is an
elementary school teacher and about to make me a grandmother! The
youngest is about to finish her last year of high school, then on to
study nutrition and food science, and photography. Both girls are art
photographers.)

Karen Olsen Ramsey

151

I started my career search headed towards being a veterinarian.

In early high school I worked with my family vet on small animals
(dogs, cats, etc.), but owned some exotic pets (snakes, iguanas, tagu
lizard, etc.); which, at the time, were very foreign to most vets. My
family vet sent me to the only zoo vet in Bufallo, NY and I started
working with him and working at the local SPCA; where I was dubbed
the “cat-man” and was also given the job of caring for the unusual
critters we received or confiscated (bats, oppossums, raccoons,
hawks, honeybears, monkeys, and more). With both Dr. McBride’s and
Dr. McClelland’s assistance, I got into a pre-vet/ veteranarian
assisting program in Delhi, NY. I graduated from that program ( 2
year AAS degree) and also took the exams to become a Registered NY
State Medical Technologist; I got certified in haematology,
microbiology, histology, urinology, and parasitology. I then went on
to continue my 4 year pre-vet work at SUNY Oneonta and took an
elective course to fufill my distribution requirements.

That elective coarse was fate. I had a choice of art, theater, or
music and felt uncompelled toward either of the last two categories.
I looked throught the art choices and saw Jewelry and Metalsmithing 1
in the list of classes with no prerequesites. Having seen my best
friend duing my youth cut cabs and make simple jewelry for them with
silver wire using his dad’s torch; I decided to try this class. I was
intrigued by how fluid solids like brass and silver could be; how
something so hard in its beginning and final forms could be made to
act like plastic using the correct approaches. I was so enthused by
this new found play (a great diversion from the mental rigors of
physics, calculus, organic and physical chemistry, and the other
"killer" coarses of a Bio/Pre-Med cuuriculum); that I took both of
the offered higher level coarses and changed my workstudy assignment
from the Bio. Dept. to working in the jewelry studio: setting up the
daily labs for the classes and watching over any after hours work to
assure safety and to shut the studio down after students were done
for the night. I set-up independant study coarses with my instructor
(thank-you Don Johnson) to continue learning about new areas of
jewelry making such as electroforming, putting on an invitational
show of SNAG artists, raising and repousse, and small run production
work. Mr. Johnson allowed me to teach the beginning jewelry classes a
lot of different techniques (Hi, Andy), which really bolstered my
metalworking confidence. I eventually changed my major to Studio Art
and graduated with a BA in Art, with a minor in chemistry. (The only
art student taking Physial Chemistry at the time).

My first job after graduation was for a well established (75 years
in business) jewelry store in my college town. I worked there as
their bench jeweler until the ownwers’ divorce and alcohol habits
made staying a shakey proposition. I opened up my own custom and
repair retail business and worked that through the next three years
in Oneonta and a one year stint in New Jersey. Circumstances brought
me to Colorado, where, after 1st working at a local store as their
master goldsmith/ purchasing agent, I set up business selling only
wholesale to the trade as a custom/ restoration supplier. That was
1985 and I am still doing the same work for clients in 9 states
today; an area (of study) I decided would give me the best
opportunity to experience the most variety of materials, techniques,
and work styles.

I am just now toying with venturing a new path of doing my own work
again; combining all of those absosrbed skills with my new found
passion for computer aided design to produce one-of-a-kind work for
show and retail sales. We’ll see where I go with that tought sometime
in the future.

Paul D. Reilly (in-finally warm and sunny-Colorado).

152

I’m amazed at how many technical backgrounds people have. Then I
think of all the details involved in jewelry making and not so
amazed.

Here’s my story: I answered an ad on a bulletin board of a grocery
store in 1981. Part time help wanted, craft studio in the area. They
were making jewelry; the rest is history. I had always worked with
my hands as a kid, knitting, crochet, decoupage, etc. In high school
it was shop classes, woodworking, drafting, metal works as well as
creative arts, sewing, etc. I knew I wanted to work with my hands
and to own my own business. I hold a BFA in Sculpture and Glass
blowing. I have considered my primary income jewelry for many, many
years.

Along the way, I did 17 years of waitressing, office temp jobs,
direct home sales company, and two-shift a week type part time jobs.
Some of that was for money, some of it for sanity. All of it makes
me glad that I am my own boss and have the flexibility to do what
needs to be done.

Jenny Levernier
jmml designs
Minneapolis, MN

153

Good thread!

My past is pretty uncomplicated. Began college as an art major and
soon switched to biology and education. I taught a year of jr. high
science and a year of jr high art (at ISB in Bangkok). Became a
mother and stayed home with the kids for about 5 years. Returned to
the working world as a sanitarian, and remained in that job for about
20 years. Took a job auditing food plants for a short time. Then
hired on at the university to manage grant programs in environmental
risk assessment and food safety. Currently, I coordinate an
environmental leadership program and help with publications on
private water and wastewater treatment.

The jewelry bug bit in high school and was reinforced in college
with metals class. The best thing was the opportunity to learn from a
studio jeweler for a few years. The last 20 plus years have been
spent mostly learning on my own and experimenting with the wonderful
things I read about on Orchid.

Orchid rocks in every way possible! Orchidians are thoughtful,
sharing, intelligent people. Thanks to each and every one of you -
and that includes the lurkers!!

Most of all, many thanks to Charles, Hanuman, and Ton, without whom
this forum would not exist!!

Judy in Kansas

154

Sandi: Reading all these varied stories, it’s easy to feel regrets
or “if onlies.” I believe that we each have our own path to follow,
and can only put one foot in front of the other. Different
personalities, histories. backgrounds etc.-- It’s quite amazing how
all of these different paths led to a very similar outcome–all of us
writing to Orchid about arriving at the point where we can enjoy, in
one way or another, our passion for making jewelry. We can only
affirm our own individual life, which is valid for us, and find
pleasure in what we have accomplished, even if it isn’t the same as
someone else.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m on Number 123 with quite a few
to account for still remaining. Everyone has sent in so much
that I hope we can take a look at some of the additional
data after we finish tabulating them all.

Sincerely,
Sandra

155

I have to reach away back to find a former life. I grew up in rural
northwestern Alberta. At the age of five I discovered that I could
draw, accused of tracing at school, so quit showing my work. Failed
the second grade for refusing to memorize. Math was easy, spelling
was hard. Learned to recognized words as pictures. I though that I
would be an artist when I grew up. At the age of ten, saw a starving
artist skit on TV. Stopped drawing, decided to be a rancher or
businessman instead. Fought with the school bully from grade five to
seven, punished frequently. Spent a summer in hospital with busted
ribs and a punctured lung after a horse stepped on me. Drew a picture
of “Venus de Milo” that got a negative reaction from the hospital
Nuns. Decided that drawing was OK afterall.

Started helping my father in his lapidary/jewellery workshop at
thirteen, rock hunting on weekends. Made my first original idea:
muskrat fur jewellery in gold plated settings, stubborn student,
refused to do math homework, so failed the seventh grade as well.
Finally creamed the bully after working all summer bailing hay. Had a
great male teacher the second time in grade seven, great teacher in
eight. School was a blast. At 16, after packing in on horseback 2= 5
miles from nearest road, got frost bitten hunting at 46 degrees
below zero in the mountains, nearly died. Rescued by forestry
service. Almost lost both feet also froze fingers, ears and tip of my
nose. Dropped out of school and moved to the Cayman Islands “The
Islands Time Forgot”.

Started a lapidary-jewellery souvenir shop. No business in the
summer went spear fishing and diving for conchs for money, bought
chicken and macaroni. Spent a summer setting up a turtle farm, and
another setting up a dairy farm. 1968 made the first deep water Black
Coral dive in the Cayman Islands. Started the Black Coral industry.
Got married in England, Spent 2 years in Canada having babies and
selling diamond rings for Peoples Jewelers. Returned to Cayman,
expanded the Black Coral Business to 47 employees, became the 4th
largest employer on the Island, Designed a new line of sophisticated
Black Coral and Diamond jewellery, had wonderful craftsman-contactors
in UK, New York and Europe. Had more babies.

After a number of diving events: an underwater blackout, a touch of
the bends, and finally an hour decompressing in a squall that nearly
sank the dive boat, I stopped deep diving for Black Coral in 1976.

I designed a line of Jewellery featuring gold Doubloons and “Pieces
of Eight” from Spanish shipwrecks. Opened a fabulous diamond and
gemstone jewellery store. Opened an international “Hard Asset”
brokerage busine= ss. Published a market newsletter. Designed a line
of rare jewels featuring exceptional antiquities and Spanish gold.
This collection, offered only in the Cayman Is= lands was published
extensively in Europe and the Caribbean. Opened a studio in Miami
with 27 craftsmen.

In 1986 I design a relational data program that eventually became
the basis for a software company that developed an open source code
shell for the Macintosh development community. After 13 man-years of
development I closed the software company and then spent 3 years of
long nights rewriting 300 thousand lines of code into something
useful.

In 1987 I designed the Metamorphosis Jewel, a never-ending collection
of rare component jewels that enabled collectors to interchange,
transform and evolve their jewel into new creations over time.
Metamorphosis was very complex and difficult to develop; it took over
4 years before the first jewel was displayed in my George Town
showroom. Aesthetically, mechanically and functionally it is a very
sophisticated jewel. Metamorphosis never became easy to make, the
masters that created and assemble this unique jewel have gradually
past on.In 1996 I took the Metamorphosis collection private and have
spent most of the last 10 years in the studio making new metamorphic
components for my existing collectors. So it seems that I have come
full circle. Currently I am designing and prototyping a new
collection that will bring a lot of my concepts togeth= er. The
problem is that I keep getting new ideas before the old ones are
complete. By the way I still can’t spell and boy am I glad that I
didn’t get an education.

Dennis Smith - thejewelmaker

156

I seem to be the only one in my family surprised at the path I had
found as a jeweler/metalsmith/etc. My grandmother still wears the
"friendship pin" I made of seed beads for her when I was a 1st
grader.

As an artistic kid, I knew I was going to be a graphic designer,
just like my aunt. I took my first metal working class in college and
I vividly remember thinking, how does anyone make a living at this?
So I pursued my graphic artists focus and ended up in L.A. working
for an extreme sports production company. The production staff was
small so I quickly found myself working as an athlete liasion for MTV
Sports, production for ESPN and espn2 events, and as a DJ spinning
the competition music for national competitions in major markets
across the U.S.

When the sports season was over, I hitched a ride with a friend from
the production crew to Colorado and taught snowboarding for a season
at Keystone Resort in Summit County.

Ultimately, I was sick of being broke, hand-to-mouth work and wound
up back in Minneapolis, my home. I started temping with Price
Waterhouse Coopers doing IT and infrastructure work and I was
encouraged by a good friend to get back to my artistic roots and to
take a jewelry class at a local art center, that was in '99 and now I
teach a class there as well.

I was hooked. I returned to school and studied the craft with
diligence. And here I am, my friend and I work side-by-side in our
studio making custom design pieces for joe-public and to satisfy our
whims.

Isn’t life grand?

Sara D. Commers
Studio C Designs
C&L Gems LLC

157

Oh lets see. Hummm -

It alway interesting to learn about what people did and do before
the hammer, tourch and sparcle got them.

Chef - 15 years

Salom fisherman - 2 seasons - left that one after a storm with 50
foot waves. think of THE PEFECT STORM x 2

Coal miner - Job Title - Master Blaster - 2 years

Pizza deliver driver - best job in the world. You would be amazed
how peope come to their doors.

Deep saturation commercal diver - 7 years, off shore oil rigs North
Sea

Scuba Instructor - 15 years and still going

Network Engineer - 6 years

Jeweler - teacher 2 years still learning

158

I started at 15 as an apprentice but to make ends meet or to make
extra cash for tools and gems when needed, I have welded custom order
bicycle frames and sold sticky buns at a bakery in the Pike Place
Market.

Nanz Aalund
Associate Editor / Art Jewelry magazine
21027 Crossroads Circle / Waukesha WI 53187-1612
262.796.8776 ext.228

159

HI Karen–YES! That’s how this thread got started. I volunteered to
tabulate and report. So far we are up to 140 very complex responses.
Continues to be really fascinating. Contributions are still coming
in, so I haven’t started the analysis yet.

Sandra

160

OK, Ok, since everybody’s doing it…Two factors influence my life,
to begin with. First, I was always curious and inventive, and my
mother never let us just hang out in the summertimes. If it wasn’t
sports, it was some crafts class - copper tooling, lapidary, pottery.
Second, in 1963, while living in Southern California, we went to the
Seattle Worlds Fair - I was 10 or 11. In doing that, we went through
San Francisco. I was mesmerized, and if anyone can fall in love with
a
place, it was me. I made my first jewelry in my father’s garage, with
his tools, just because I wanted to. So, after NMSU suggested I might
do better elsewhere, I went to Albuquerque at about 18 years old. I
applied for various jobs, but got one at a newly formed turquoise
jewelry manufacturer, right around the corner from the original Rio
Grande location, partly because I told them of my lapidary
experience.
That company went from $0 to $1,000,000 in a year, and I went with
it. At it’s height I was foreman of the silversmithing dept. with
about 30 people under me, and also the lapidary shop with about 6 or
8
people doing cabbing and also inlay. That experience taught me how to
fabricate anything. Unfortuately, they didn’t pay their taxes, the
IRS shut them down, and I couldn’t get a job because I was white
(frankly). So I put out the golden thumb, hitchhiked all around the
west for about six months (Northbound isn’t working? Let’s try
southbound…) and landed in Pacific Grove, Ca., which is the
Monterey peninsula. I did odd jobs, was a gardener a lot, worked in a
metaphysical bookstore, and made jewelry in a friendly garage. I did
a foundation job that made me some money, decided it was time to
leave, and flew to Honolulu on a one way ticket. I was there for
about
6 months, working as a jeweler, which taught me gold and we did a lot
of black coral and opal - fairly cheap stuff but well made. Island
fever set in, so I left and came to San Francisco, FINALLY. I got a
job as a union goldsmith with a fine jewelry manufacturer - diamonds,
gold and platinum. They were a major supplier to Zales, had pieces in
the DeBeer’s ads, and the owner was a trustee of the Jeweler’s Union
pension fund. 3 years later my mother approached me, wanting to
invest in a company, so I quit my job and formed Donivan & Co. After
a year of being in the wrong location, I moved back where we have
been
ever since, in Union Square, SF. And by the way, I also inherited the
line of the company I started with when I came here…

http://www.donivanandmaggiora.com