7 Things I Learned About Jewelry-Making From Oscar Heyman

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7 Things I Learned About Jewelry-Making From Oscar Heyman

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Wow, what an opportunity she had, and I would have jumped on it, too. I think it's likely that even seasoned jewelry makers will find something in this one that they can use. Enjoy! :)

7 Things I Learned About Jewelry-Making From Oscar Heyman
April 23, 2018 by Victoria Gomelsky

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"On Thursday, I had the pleasure of spending two hours at the Oscar Heyman workshop on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue, learning how to make a simple 18k yellow gold pin.

It was not my first time in a jewelry-making arena. I’ve toured small ateliers in Los Angeles that consist of just a couple benches as well as enormous factories in Mumbai, where jewelry bound for America’s volume retailers is produced. But I had never actually participated in the act of making jewelry. The process of how molten metal transforms into a well-crafted, perfectly proportioned piece of jewelry remained, essentially, a mystery.

Until, that is, Tom Heyman, a third-generation member of the family business founded by brothers Oscar and Nathan Heyman in 1912, entrusted me with a torch.

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Brothers George, Oscar, Nathan, Harry, William, and Louis Heyman, circa 1950 (photo courtesy Oscar Heyman)

Here are just a few of the things I learned during my master class at Oscar Heyman.
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Jewelry-making is at once stealthy and loud.

Since 1969, Oscar Heyman has occupied two floors at 501 Madison Ave. (the same building where jewelers David Yurman, Jose Hess, and Kurt Wayne once worked). The floor where visitors enter houses the foyer, conference rooms, the administrative team, the stone-buying room, and file cabinets containing some 180,000 historic designs stored on yellowing cards. It was renovated about five years ago, when all the dark wood paneling was removed in favor of a lighter, more modern color scheme.

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Tom Heyman holding one of the 180,000 designs stored in Oscar Heyman’s archives.

"We wanted the space not to be looking backwards, but to be looking forwards,” Tom explained.

The first floor is so refined and elegant, you’d never guess there’s a full-fledged jewelry and tool-and-die workshop upstairs full of decades-old machines, including one date-stamped 1894! ... "

https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-art ... -334329457
PinkDiamond
ISG Registered Gemologist


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