Five Jewelry Schools That Prepare Students for the Job Market

For those who wring their hands over the future of the jewelry world, a look to academia provides steadying assurance that the artisans of tomorrow are being trained today. It’s an evolution happening in art schools nationwide, where making jewelry is serious business — and so is getting a job. At the institutions below (and there are many more across the country), the department heads have been in place for decades, most of them graduates of the departments they run. That continuity and belief in their schools inspires confidence that the future of all that sparkles is remarkably robust.

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)

You would be hard-pressed to land on a school offering both undergraduate and graduate jewelry-making programs with a more storied pedigree than RISD in Providence, Rhode Island. The graduate program began in 1879, later expanding to include an undergraduate option. By 1904, RISD was on its way to training craftsmen and -women for industry businesses like Gorham Silver, which was located across the street at the time.

Today, the school has a relationship with Platinum Guild International (PGI), which supplies material for the students, and Tiffany & Co. has asked RISD to design an apprenticeship program about learning to work in the industry. RISD has three full-time professors and six to eight part-time staff, with leading industry professionals coming in to teach on a guest basis. The diverse student body learns skills ranging from jewelry-making to business etiquette.

“We really push professionalism in the program and at every level,” says Tracy Steepy, department head for jewelry and metalsmithing.

The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

“Location, location, location.” Those three buzzwords have given New York’s FIT the kind of edge that other schools and companies dream of: proximity to an established industry that needs their services. By the early 1970s, the city’s famed diamond district needed an infusion of trained jewelers to continue the trade that immigrants had established in the 1940s. Leaders of the notoriously private sector approached FIT about training qualified candidates, according to Kim Nelson, assistant professor of jewelry design. That was the beginning of FIT’s symbiotic relationship with New York’s jewelers.

“Back in the 1970s, a lot of professors were active in the jewelry industry,” recalls 1980 FIT graduate Russell Zelenetz, who now co-owns Stephen Russell, one of Manhattan’s most exclusive jewelry boutiques. Among those professors was Samuel Beizer, who became the first head of FIT’s jewelry design department. “Beizer taught a course called ‘History of Jewelry,’ which taught us how old jewelry was made, using techniques we still employ today.”

Among other things, the school focuses on “getting our graduates work in the industry,” says Nelson, adding with pride that “what we produce in two years is remarkable.”

The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

“Students have to see jewelry as a career and understand the business of jewelry. They need to know what it takes to have their dreams come true.” That’s the prevailing viewpoint of Jay Song, jewelry chair at SCAD in Georgia.

The 135-plus students in what she says is “the largest jewelry degree-granting program in the US” may choose from a BFA, MFA and MA. That’s a lot of academic power to leverage, and SCAD does so through a tightly planned curriculum. For the undergrad, this always begins with foundation and general education studies, the latter targeting communication skills, marketing and economics. It’s serious groundwork for the serious-minded, who then move on to studio training. At the graduate level, the program demands more in terms of know-how, technique and creativity. The large studio space and ample equipment are enticing for students, but Song and her staff emphasize that life after SCAD is the worthiest goal of all.

The Tyler School of Art and Architecture

Mention this institution to a jewelry maven, and the name Stanley Lechtzin comes to mind. It was Lechtzin who began the jewelry and metals program at Tyler in 1962, running it until 2018, and it was his personal interest in innovations such as electroforming and computer-aided design (CAD) that quickly defined the Tyler curriculum. By 1989, Tyler was the first school to teach CAD and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM).

Today, 80% of the courses at the school have a digital component, making Tyler the largest such program in the US, according to Doug Bucci, assistant professor and program head for metals, jewelry and CAD/CAM. As part of Temple University in Philadelphia, Tyler further benefits from Temple’s designation as an R1 institution — one with very high research activity — and its overall academic excellence. But there is another type of excellence to be found at Tyler, courtesy of 1952 alumnus Helen Drutt English. A great leader in the modern craft movement, Drutt bequeathed her extraordinary art book collection to Temple. That’s a master class in paying it forward.

92NY

For those known simply as “New Yorkers,” you don’t have to be academically inclined to reap the benefits of a solid jewelry education. You just head over to the 92nd Street Y, or 92NY — the city’s beloved arts and cultural institution, where the doors are always open to “lifelong learners.” That’s how Jonathan Wahl, director of its jewelry center since 1999, describes the diverse group that comes throughout the year to make jewelry.

For decades, 92NY has been a resource for both the neophyte and the professional, with wax carving, metalsmithing, and enameling available to all. The “all” is what reinforces the power of community in a city known for embracing the ebb and flow of people from around the world. As Wahl says, “you can come and go, because we’re always here.”

Main image: Fabrication classroom at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). (Kim Nelson)

This article is from the July-August 2024 issue of Rapaport Magazine. View other articles here.