A Ring is a Ring is a Ring

As a focal point, the students took inspiration from the ancient and historic gimmel ring. Chosen for its unique composition, each of the three rings contribute one component to the ring’s final visual appearance. When worn, it symbolises how our project aims to bring three very different schools and its respective students together.

The students travelled to Germany and Italy and participated in thought provoking workshops which introduced them to collaborative and creative development processes and challenged students to discover their own identities as makers. With input from Ulrich Reithofer at the start of their journey into the world of rings and hand adornments, they all individually responded to the brief with a ring or series of rings.

The results of their investigations are on display in the Hatton Garden area during the London Design Festival.

Sofie Boons, Head of Teaching and Learning of BAJ said: The aim of the project was to enable students to critically engage with their discipline whilst reflecting upon the diverse industry they are embarking onto. The show will provide the audience and visitors with an exciting insight of what it is to study jewellery today.


About the British Academy of Jewellery
Born out of the industry in 1999 by a local Hatton Garden family-run business that has traded since 1948, we are a not-for-profit social enterprise dedicated to pioneering jewellery education and training programmes that nurture creative talent and technical ability.
The British Academy of Jewellery aims to be a jewellery school where technical training is not an afterthought. Where technical skills are not seen as a hindrance to creativity, but where knowledge acquired by the hands provides inspiration. Aspiring to be a school where students do not shy away from originality and creativity and where traditional techniques are taught to then be challenged.
Responding to industry needs, we seek to provide the next generation of skilled jewellers who possess the aptitude and ingenuity to shape the future of the industry.
With bases in London and Birmingham, we work closely with industry, government and education partners with hopes to build a support network to help sustain the growth of the jewellery trade and other creative industries within the UK.


About Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School
Alchimia was founded in 1998 in Florence; the birthplace of the Renaissance, a city known for its legacy of artisans and many cultural associations, a pulsating source of the arts and crafts, as well as history and culture.This context contributed in a bilateral enriching exchange and overflowing inspiration that shaped the “Alchimia Method” and defined it as an intellectual and physical eclecticism, throughout the years. Alchimia’s focus draws on the revision and adoption of traditional techniques and knowledges, and carefully selected materials combined with experimental, and ground-breaking approaches to Art and design, leading students in how to transform ideas and to research paths in Art jewellery, design objects,… to be able to access an individual working method, expressed in a unique language that communicates universally to generations.


About Campus Idar-Oberstein, Hochschule Trier
As its location in Idar-Oberstein suggests, the course of study leading to bachelor and master of fine arts degrees, along with independent art work, is about the subject of jewellery and adornment – and, often in the first instance, gemstones. They need not be present in every work, yet an attitude to the material is to be developed. Studying at a gemstone centre is premised on this investigation and its ramifications.
As an object of personal use, jewellery without any doubt needs distinctive or connecting levels of meaning. Therefore the Department enforces research in questions on art, social life, ethnology and history. The field of learning is specifically dedicated to evolve the students own artistic identity. It is coined by a profoundly intercultural environment and a highly communicative teaching and study situation.
The curriculum offered by the university in Idar-Oberstein is unique worldwide – gemstone and jewellery design can be studied here at bachelor and master degree level. Fortunately, the range of courses offered attracts particularly motivated and focused applicants because working with gemstones is especially complex, requires sure instincts, a great deal of patience and often assertiveness as well as an all-encompassing desire to design.