Pendant of sterling silver inlaid with labradorite, lapis, ebony, and vegetable ivory suspended on a strand of azurite/malachite beads by Donald Stuart, head of the jewelry and lapidary program of Ontario's Georgian College of Applied Arts & Technology. Photo: Donald Stuart.

by Mark Lurie

With its ultra-modern brick-and-glass exterior, Georgian College of Applied Arts & Technology in Barrie, Ontario, projects just the sort of image you'd expect from a town determined to hit the ground running in the next century. The college, which offers diplomas in such cutting-edge industries as aerospace and computer technology, also trains students in service-sector fields such as hotel management and automotive marketing. Yet it has also gained a reputation as one of the best places in Canada to learn jewelry design.

Tucked away at the back of the college in a building it shares with classes in painting, sculpture, and printmaking, the jewelry and metals (J&M) program offers a two-year diploma followed by a graduate year in which students can pursue advanced studies. What is unique about this “two-plus-one” program is the chance it offers students to gain practical experience by working in the field, as well as the lapidary course that all graduates must complete -- the only such course offered in a college setting anywhere in Canada.

Lapidary instructor David McAleese and his partner, Alison Wiggins, collaborated on this pin, entitled Lunch at the Ritz of 18K gold, vitrolite, turquoise, and jet. Photo: David McAleese.

I visited Georgian last December, as the students were wrapping up their end-of-semester projects. I poked around for a few minutes, observing the close quarters students worked in. The three classrooms are clustered together, with the first- and third-year rooms adjoining an equipment room. For the lapidary students, a small section had been partitioned off, which included four polishing machines and a split lap. The general area included everything from a draw bench, drill press, and two rolling mills, to a countertop laden with fabrication and tool-making equipment. The place was humming with activity, punctuated (or is it punctured?) by the intermittent industrial sounds of a student drill-pressing a hole through a granite carving.

Stuart, who developed Georgian College's current J&M program, created this brooch by combining 14K gold, a beach pebble, hematite bead, and inlays of ebony and azurite. Photo: Donald Stuart

In the third-year classroom, I found lapidary instructor Dave McAleese, who comes up from his home/studio in Toronto, 55 miles to the south, to teach at the college twice a week. We went out into the hallway where we could talk without distracting the students, hard at work.

“We get people who come from areas where they might not want to go to Toronto,” he explained, pointing out that many of the students come from the nearby small towns and farming communities, and feel more comfortable in a suburban environment. But they are also drawn to the balanced education the program offers.

“[Ours] is a fairly new program, so we looked at doing something different from what the other established metals programs [in Ontario] do,” he explained. Where other colleges might focus on either fostering technical skill or promoting design innovation, Georgian's program is intended to offer students what McAleese calls “design and technique in a unique balance.”

This neckpiece of sterling silver inlaid with lapis lazuli, malachite, silver ore, turquoise, and labradorite was crafted by Donald Stuart, head of the jewelry and metals prgram at Georgian College. Photo: Ron Katz.

The program consists chiefly of students in their 20s, though McAleese said it ranges from those fresh out of high school to the occasional senior citizen looking to jewelry as a second career. And career is the operative word. Most of the students who receive their diploma, and just about everyone who completes the third-year graduate program, plan on earning a living in the trade in one capacity or another -- a fact which has helped motivate them.

“They're here because they want to be here, not because they have to be here,” McAleese said of the 13 graduate students hard at work on their cabochon and inlay projects, many of whom pay their own tuition. “They come here, they know the meter's running. Just look through the door; there's not too many feet up on the desk. They're very focused.”

We walked over to the next building to view the lapidary room, where we were soon joined by program head Don Stuart, a soft-spoken man wearing a leather vest, rolled shirtsleeves, and jeans. A born campaigner who currently serves as president of the Society of North American Goldsmiths, he pointed out which of the diamond saws and vertical grinders have been donated by members of the local community, and which are on loan from either him or McAleese.

“I'm always after corporations. [I tell them,] 'We'll put your name over the door if you donate the equipment,'” he said with total sincerity. While corporations have been slow in responding, much of the equipment has come from private donors. “Word gets out and we do get people phoning up and saying, 'We've got some goodies we'd like to give to the college.'”

 

A lizard brooch by Georgian student Steve Spencer, in its preliminary design stage, and in its finished form of sterling silver, sodalite, and moss agate.

STRIKING A BALANCE. It was Stuart who developed the current program in 1989, amid a recession that “decimated” the jewelry trade in Canada. A veteran teacher who witnessed the disappearance of jewelry programs throughout the country after the craft boom of the '70s and '80s, he saw the crisis as an opportunity.

“I was able to prove [to the administration] that the market was not dying,” he said. “First, I called up Barrie's people in the trade, be it studio or commercial, and asked, 'What do you think?' They all said, 'Yes, yes, we need employees.' So I got a group of people together as an advisory committee to put together a program . . . and someone said, 'Let's put together a program like the one we would love to have taken had we had the opportunity.'”

The result was a three-year program, soon changed to the two-plus-one system, which was designed to meet two key requirements: first, more practical experience prior to entering the professional world; and second, a balance of technical and aesthetic training.

The first requirement was met by establishing a “co-op” program. At the end of their second year, prior to graduation, students must put in a semester's worth of work in the industry. The department's co-op officer finds jobs for which the students themselves must apply, and for which they need to sell themselves, since the employer has the final decision on whom to hire. The jobs are paid positions, can be located anywhere, and may last beyond the terms of the co-op arrangement should the employer and student wish. The employer submits a written assessment of the student's performance to the department for consideration in their overall evaluation.

Stuart said that from the outset he wanted to strike a balance between the commercial end of the trade with what he calls the “craft” side of it. “We're within an art program, but the emphasis is not only art. We want art in the sense of design, but we want technique, and that's the trade school coming out. Because as far as being an employee, you're going to need the skill,” he said. “In the end, I want a student who comes out of here with a nice sense of design, and has good technical skill, and they can combine those to make good jewelry. It's not either/or. We'd really like them meshed.”

In the first year, students study metals and learn basic fabrication and casting techniques, chain making and linking systems, and jewelry repairs. The following year, they learn basic stone setting, take two drawing courses, two silversmithing courses, and study gemology, as well as professional practices for jewelers and production casting techniques and applications.

In addition, students must take a number of General Education electives, which can be made to relate directly to jewelry. For instance, they are encouraged to take courses such as History of Jewelry and History of Metal Arts. What no student can avoid, however, are the dreaded communications courses, such as Workplace Communications and Techniques of Writing and Speaking.

Those who go on to pursue the post-graduate diploma take courses in lapidary, J&M techniques such as advanced stone setting, model making, and patination, and also learn studio techniques such as enameling, hydraulic die forming, and working with precious metal clay. They follow this up in second semester with a course in sales, marketing, and photography, a second J&M techniques course, which among other things touches on reactive metals and toolmaking, and finally a unique studio course which allows them to design their own curriculum, which can -- and often does -- include more advanced lapidary work.

This final course is set up as a contract, wherein students state at the outset what they want to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it. At the end of the semester, they bring in their body of work for a critique from the two full-time faculty members, Stuart and Greg Merrall, who judge it according to how well it meets the student's stated goals.

“Essentially, they either choose something very specific to do, or a broad range of work,” said McAleese, noting that not all students want to be one-of-a-kind designers. “Some of them have chosen production line [work for their studio project]. They know that they're going to go out and they're going to be commercial jewelers, so they focus on doing production line jewelry while they're here at the college, so that when they graduate they can hit the ground running.”

GRADUATING TO STONES. Of the third-year students I spoke with, most do in fact wish to become self-employed studio jewelers. To that end, they see the lapidary course as a real advantage, since it enables them to design completely from the bottom up.

Lapidary became an integral part of Georgian's jewelry program in September 1997. The students work primarily with agates and jasper; Student David Shipside created this cross from agate.

“We've always felt that having total control over the design means stones as well,” McAleese said. “It's like finding another color in your palette: instead of being restricted by what you can buy on the shelf, you've got total control over design, shape, form, everything. I think they're better designers because they've got that full palette.”

Lapidary was first offered in 1991, when McAleese, a veteran stone carver who supplies designers throughout southwestern Ontario, was brought in to teach it as an elective. The students wanted more of it, though, and last September it became an integral part of the graduate program.

“We sort of said, 'OK, let's get them making jewelry and then throw in the lapidary. By that time, their eye-hand co-ordination is going to take them no time to pick up on it,'” said McAleese. “They cut probably six stones on the very first day of lapidary class, because they're really good at doing this stuff. So the learning curve is really quick.”

Students work on separate projects involving cabochons and carved inlays. “At this point, they're mostly working with agates and jaspers,” said McAleese, who sells the students most of the rough they use at cost. “They've worked more expensive stuff. We've brought in turquoise, black onyx, and that kind of thing, but I really wanted them not to feel intimidated by the cost of the material.”

The students' work ranges widely in terms of size. Some of the inlay pieces I saw included a large cross and an eight-inch square clock made of labradorite, magnetite, silver, brass, and sand-blasted mirror. DoriAnne Ross, 22, who made the clock, said she's always liked taking things apart and remaking them, so the fascination with mechanical construction was already there. But she admitted to a little trepidation at cutting stones. “I didn't think I'd like it at all,” she said. Now, though, she's really taken to it. “I like building from nothing . . . I had that totally in my head, and now it's actually there. It's cool.”

The carvings in the clock's face are larger than those generally used in jewelry, but then, she tends to prefer large jewelry pieces as well. Her rings typically weigh at least five grams, though she added, “I made my first small ring this year, which I'm proud of.”

Starting off with bigger stones is a good way for students to get a handle on cutting, since they can then scale down to more standard jewelry sizes. Tara McFarlane, 21, who was working on a series of inlaid brooches and pendants using stones such as jasper, moss agate, and tiger's-eye, said, “I find it very hard to grind down and get an even flat surface when you're working with small things.” Having started out trying to make smaller carvings, she switched to larger pieces to hone her technique. Now she is confident carving 2.5 millimeter inlays for a pair of small earrings.

A FOR ATTITUDE. Over lunch in the faculty dining room, Stuart, McAleese, Greg Merrall, and program technician Jackie Dub, a Class-of-92 graduate who teaches in the program part time, offered their thoughts on the importance of a positive attitude in making one's way in the field.

Student Ray Cadeaux made this letter opener of brass and agate. The instructors have brought in more valuable stones on occasion, but “I really wanted them not to feel intimidated by the cost of the material,” says McAleese.

When admitting students to the program, Stuart will sit down with the applicants and listen to what they hope to gain from the program. With many of them coming straight out of high school, he doesn't think it fair to judge applicants on the quality of work done up to this point, and thus will not accept or reject students based on their portfolios.

“The portfolio to me is a conversation piece, that they've had some art background, and that you can talk to the student about what they want to get out of the course,” he said. “If there has to be a line drawn, I would make the decision based on attitude, on their enthusiasm and their willingness to work and their ultimate career goals, not on the quality of their work.”

The portfolio becomes far more important for students seeking admission to the graduate program, where there is tough competition for the 13 available spaces. Forced to choose between students, the faculty is often faced with a hard decision. “We've ended up really going by marks,” Stuart said, acknowledging that grading in jewelry and metals -- as with any other art course -- is bound to be subjective. But then, as Merrall pointed out, the fact that students are graded by three or four different instructors means that any grading inequalities tend to even out in the end.

Technical proficiency represents a large part of their grade -- for every six-hour studio class they take, students are expected to put in at least another 12 hours of work on their own time, in order to build skill -- but so too does adventurousness. “I think the really ambitious piece will get bonus marks for being really ambitious, and hopefully if they bite off more than they can chew -- and that happens -- that will help compensate for the technical competency marks,” said McAleese. Conversely, added Stuart, “If it's very simple, then it better be perfect technically.”

The classrooms at Georgian are a hive of activity as students work in close, but well-stocked quarters.

Even here, though, Stuart pointed out that an A is largely reflective of a positive attitude. “I often make a comparison for the students, which is also a threat. I say, 'If you were an employer coming on campus right now to hire somebody out of this class, who would you hire? Would you hire yourself? Are you good enough for yourself?' At this point they're all sitting there with their mouths open, and then I ask, 'And whose responsibility is it that you would hire yourself?'”

How well the students perform in the professional world is ultimately the only real measure of success. “The fixation with marks really has no application outside these walls,” said MacAleese, relating one of the most important messages he imparts to his students. “When you go look for a job, the employer says, 'I want your portfolio. I don't care what other people say about your work; I want to decide.'”