SACI Jewelry Design students at work in the studio
The Late Spring and Summer terms at SACI require long studio hours, but with so much concentrated time, a lot of work can get done in a condensed study period. The Jewelry Design class spent intense hours at their work benches learning new techniques of jewelry fabrication with metals, but also had time to get out of the studio and visit some jewelry exhibitions and artist studios around Florence.
Work bench of jewelry artist Martina Loncar (Florence)
There are so many potential places to visit in Florence related to jewelry because the city has a historic tradition of jewelry artisans going way back to the Renaissance. Plus, the city has fine examples of contemporary jewelry artists and designers, and frequently holds temporary exhibitions related to such.
Some of the places the recent SACI classes visited with their instructor, Naomi Muirhead, included the historic and contemporary jewelry collections in the Galleria degli Argenti of the Palazzo Pitti, a Craftmen’s pop-up in the Caffè Florian’s contemporary art collection, contemporary jewelry gallery Antonella Villanova, the temporary exhibition Gioielli d’Artista: La Tradizione nella Modernità, and the studios of international jewelry artists Laura Wandry and Martina Lončar. Here, SACI students learned how Laura arrived to Florence from Texas via Sweden and Martina from Slovenia to study under Italian jewelry masters and create and market their own unique lines. Laura embraces her graphic design experience in her jewelry designs, and Martina experiments between concept and form, and most recently with LED technology. Both artists use a combination of casting and hand fabrication.
Work bench of jewelry artist Laura Wandry (Florence)
