Jewellery design and technical drawing course
The jewellery design courses are designed to furnish the graphic skills necessary for the profession of jewellery designer, and for jewellery production in general. The acquisition of these competencies is considered indispensable both to develop creativity and to lay the foundations for a correct design approach.
The creative profession of Jewellery Designer features a high level of independence, allowing individuals to work both freelance and as employees of jewellery firms.
The courses provide an adequate knowledge of the languages of graphic representation: from freehand sketching to flat and descriptive geometry, from technical drawing to mixed illustration techniques.
The jewellery design courses are divided into modules of 32 hours each, organised in two 4-hour sessions per week.
In view of the complexity of the subjects dealt with, the teaching and exercises in class are alternated with constant practice sessions outside school hours, which are considered indispensable for re-elaborating the concepts learned.
The foundation course in Jewellery Design is aimed at students who have little or no knowledge of design and who wish to master the basics of freehand drawing and want to try their hand at the techniques of representation used in jewellery.
The aim of the course is to train the student so that he/she is in a position to represent the general idea of the piece of jewellery, first through sketches and pencil drawings and then the method of orthogonal projections (Monge method) and the axonometric projection method, in order to represent the jewel with the greatest precision whatever its size and shape.
The final objective is to design an object, complete with the preparatory drawings that make it possible to analyse its feasibility and wearability, before moving on to the final drafting of the technical drawings.
The advanced course in Jewellery Design is aimed at students who have already mastered the tools and techniques addressed in the foundation course.
Students attending the course are expected to have a knowledge of the basic techniques for the representation of the various parts of an article of jewellery.
The course programmes study of the individual components of the jewellery artefact and analysis of the issues involved in the design of a jewellery collection.
In the final project of the course the student will be required to design a parure consisting of necklace, bracelet, ring, brooch and earrings, which illustrates the shared design concept as well as the materials used and the decorative technique employed.
The main topics of the course are:
- Jewellery design: types and features
- The components of the jewellery artefact
- Study of clasps, joints, mountings, pins, hinges, joints and mechanisms
- Semi-finished articles
- Study of assembly and joint systems
- Setting techniques
- Design of a parure consisting of necklace, bracelet, ring, brooch and earrings
- Execution of final design drawings using pencil and watercolour techniques
