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Bench Jeweler
A bench jeweler is an artisan who uses a combination of skills to make and repair jewelry. Some of the more common skills that a bench jeweler might employ include antique restoration, silversmith, Goldsmith, stone setting, engraving, fabrication, wax carving, lost-wax casting, electroplating, forging, and polishing. Jewelry manufacture In general, an original design is made and sold using processes such as molding, casting, stamping and similar techniques. The other is original, one of a kind work. The bench jeweler will be a factor in many facets of the process, depending on what is needed and the skills of the worker. When a production piece is contemplated, it may go through a design process that can range from one person with an idea to a full-scale planning stage involving teams of artists and marketing professionals. Eventually, that design will need to be made into a real piece of metal jewelry, which is generally called a model, and the worker who makes it is ...
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Vocational
A vocation () is an occupation to which a person is especially drawn or for which they are suited, trained or qualified. People can be given information about a new occupation through student orientation. Though now often used in non-religious contexts, the meanings of the term originated in Christianity. Senses Use of the word "vocation" before the sixteenth century referred firstly to the "call" by God to an individual, or calling of all humankind to salvation, particularly in the Vulgate, and more specifically to the "vocation" to the priesthood, or to the religious life, which is still the usual sense in Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism recognizes marriage, religious, and ordained life as the three vocations. Martin Luther, followed by John Calvin, placed a particular emphasis on vocations, or divine callings, as potentially including most secular occupations, though this idea was by no means new. Calvinism developed complex ideas about different types of vocations of ...
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Watchmaker
A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since a majority of watches are now factory-made, most modern watchmakers only repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their parts, by hand. Modern watchmakers, when required to repair older watches, for which replacement parts may not be available, must have fabrication skills, and can typically manufacture replacements for many of the parts found in a watch. The term clockmaker refers to an equivalent occupation specializing in clocks. Most practising professional watchmakers service current or recent production watches. They seldom fabricate replacement parts. Instead they obtain and fit factory spare parts applicable to the watch brand being serviced. The majority of modern watchmakers, particularly in Switzerland and other countries in Europe, work directly for the watchmaking industry and may have completed a formal watchmaking degree at a technical school. ...
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Lost-wax Casting
Lost-wax casting (also called "investment casting", "precision casting", or ''cire perdue'' which has been adopted into English from the French, ) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is cast from an original sculpture. Intricate works can be achieved by this method. The oldest known examples of this technique are approximately 6,500-year-old (4550–4450 BC) and attributed to gold artefacts found at Bulgaria's Varna Necropolis. A copper amulet from Mehrgarh, Indus Valley civilization, in Pakistan, is dated to circa 4,000 BC. Cast copper objects, found in the Nahal Mishmar hoard in southern Israel, which belong to the Chalcolithic period (4500–3500 BC), are estimated, from carbon-14 dating, to date to circa 3500 BC. In Other examples from somewhat later periods are from Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Lost-wax casting was widespread in Europe until the 18th century, when a piece-moulding process came to predo ...
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Silversmith
A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exactly synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product may vary greatly as may the scale of objects created. History In the ancient Near East the value of silver to gold was lower, allowing a silversmith to produce objects and store these as stock. Ogden states that according to an edict written by Diocletian in 301 A.D., a silversmith was able to charge 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, or 300 ''denarii'' for material produce (per Roman pound). At that time, guilds of silversmiths formed to arbitrate disputes, protect its members' welfare and educate the public of the trade. Silversmiths in medieval Europe and England formed guilds and transmitted their tools and techniques to new generations via the apprentice tradition. Silver working guilds often maintained consistency and upheld standards at the expense of i ...
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Jewelers' Row
Jewelers' Row, located in the Center City section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is composed of more than 300 retailers, wholesalers, and craftsmen located on Sansom Street between Seventh and Eighth Streets, and on Eighth Street between Chestnut and Walnut Streets. It is the oldest diamond district in America, and second in size only to the one in New York City. Many of the area's retail, jewelrymaking and appraisal businesses have been owned by the same families for five generations. History Jeweler’s Row (Carstairs Row) was designed by builder and architect Thomas Carstairs circa 1799 through 1820, for developer William Sansom, as part of the first speculative housing developments in the United States, and introduction of the Row house in the United States. Carstairs Row was built on the southern part of the site occupied by "Morris' Folly" – Robert Morris’ unfinished mansion designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant.
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Machine Shop
A machine shop or engineering workshop (UK) is a room, building, or company where machining, a form of subtractive manufacturing, is done. In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plastic (but sometimes of other materials such as glass or wood). A machine shop can be a small business (such as a job shop) or a portion of a factory, whether a toolroom or a production area for manufacturing. The building construction and the layout of the place and equipment vary, and are specific to the shop; for instance, the flooring in one shop may be concrete, or even compacted dirt, and another shop may have asphalt floors. A shop may be air-conditioned or not; but in other shops it may be necessary to maintain a controlled climate. Each shop has its own tools and machinery which differ from other shops in quantity, capability and focus of expertise. The parts produced can be the end product of the factory, to be sold to customer ...
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Enamelist
Vitreous enamel, also called porcelain enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between . The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating. The word comes from the Latin , meaning "glass". Enamel can be used on metal, glass, ceramics, stone, or any material that will withstand the fusing temperature. In technical terms fired enamelware is an integrated layered composite of glass and another material (or more glass). The term "enamel" is most often restricted to work on metal, which is the subject of this article. Essentially the same technique used with other bases is known by different terms: on glass as ''enamelled glass'', or "painted glass", and on pottery it is called ''overglaze decoration'', "overglaze enamels" or "enamelling". The craft is called "enamelling", the artists "enamellers" and the objects produced can be called "enamels". Enamelling is an old and widely adopted technology, for mo ...
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Gemstone
A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, and obsidian) and occasionally organic materials that are not minerals (such as amber, jet, and pearl) are also used for jewelry and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well. Most gemstones are hard, but some soft minerals are used in jewelry because of their luster or other physical properties that have aesthetic value. Rarity and notoriety are other characteristics that lend value to gemstones. Apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity engraved gems and hardstone carvings, such as cups, were major luxury art forms. A gem expert is a gemologist, a gem maker is called a lapidarist or gemcutter; a diamond cutter is called a diamantaire. Characteristics and classification The traditional classification in the West ...
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Wax Carving
{{unreferenced, date=April 2012 Wax carving is the shaping of wax using tools usually associated with machining: rotary tools, saws, files and burins or gravers. Actual knives can be used and most certainly are, but the hardness of the material is such that they are not the ideal tool, generally. To carve wax, the proper size and shape of block or tube is chosen, in the preferred hardness, and cut to a rough size, as needed. Then the design is generally drawn or laid out on that, and saws, files or machine tools are used to work the wax into a finished product. The wax is easily taken to a fine finish in the end using a bit of nylon stocking or steel wool. After the wax product is finished, it may be molded or used in the lost wax casting process to create a final cast product. Casting waxes There are a wide variety of wax types used in the lost wax casting process. Generally they fall into three main types, soft, hard and injection waxes. Injection waxes are made and inte ...
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Model Making
A scale model is a physical model which is geometrically similar to an object (known as the prototype). Scale models are generally smaller than large prototypes such as vehicles, buildings, or people; but may be larger than small prototypes such as anatomical structures or subatomic particles. Models built to the same scale as the prototype are called mockups. Scale models are used as tools in engineering design and testing, promotion and sales, filmmaking special effects, military strategy, and hobbies such as rail transport modeling, wargaming and racing; and as toys. Model building is also pursued as a hobby for the sake of artisanship. Scale models are constructed of plastic, wood, or metal. They are usually painted with enamel, lacquer, or acrylics, and decals may be applied for lettering and fine details. They may be built from scratch, or from commercially made kits, either out of the box or modified (known as kitbashing). Model prototypes include all types of ve ...
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Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and serviceable utensils, and ceremonial or religious items. Goldsmiths must be skilled in forming metal through filing, soldering, sawing, forging, casting, and polishing. The trade has very often included jewelry-making skills, as well as the very similar skills of the silversmith. Traditionally, these skills had been passed along through apprenticeships; more recently jewelry arts schools, specializing in teaching goldsmithing and a multitude of skills falling under the jewelry arts umbrella, are available. Many universities and junior colleges also offer goldsmithing, silversmithing, and metal arts fabrication as a part of their fine arts curriculum. Gold Compared to other metals, gold is malleable, ductile, rare, and it is the only soli ...
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