2 JEWELLERY DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE

What I felt when I came the very first day in the jewellery was a negative thought because at first it was just something that I did not want to do and I had no idea what it was about. Back home in the Congo jewellery designer is not really considered as a great carrier. Not any school of jewellery, most of our jewellery are made in copper and brass reason why on the market jewellery does not really have so much value. As we were growing most of the precious jewellery use to be made out of the country then sent to Congo, basically we use to buy jewellery that was made out the country such as Dubai, China, and some from Europe.

At the beginning of my first year staying jewellery was really a confusing moment because my mind was somewhere else (graphic design) my only plan was after my first year was going to switch to the course I wanted to do at first. At the beginning of my first year I was not really happy and was not seeing myself as a jeweller, because of the Congolese conception of jewellery. my all family were not really happy me being there they advise was to change the course after one year because I was already in the institution CPUT, but with time I started understating the course and accommodating to it.

At some point I started comparing jewellery and graphic design then from there I understood that the time I spent in Cape Town College was a time to prepare myself for university. because in jewellery I found that some of the subjects I had in college was also some of the subject I had to do in jewellery but in the different forms , such as design and drawing is among the main subjects, ‘for me is was a bit easy to accommodate to those two subjects, with the time spent in started changing my mind and started falling in love with the course because it was something similar with what I wanted to study ( graphic design) I understood that the difference was just on some subjects such as technique( manufacturing). The term technique was really unfamiliar to me I did not really know what it was about. The time lectures started introducing to us, as a beginner it was not easy , introducing us first to all the names of all the tools we had to use and how to manipulate them, introducing us to the work shop and all the machines we had to use trough out the year, with time the lectures started introducing us to manufacture by sawing lines drilling filling, and all the work we can be doing at the bench using brass and copper plates, at first those exercises were not really easy but help full to me, by exercising I started to get used to it and understanding how I could hold my saw frame specially sawing straight lines, filling straight how to use the motto pendant, and all that basic work on the bench, then the manufacturing started with a small exercise on how to use the smelting torches, adjusting the right flame and preparing the crucible by using the powder called borax, once the everything was ready then we had to be introduce to the metal called silver, which we had to smelt and make a very first piece of jewellery, we basically had to make a silver bar and transform it to a spoon by forging it with a metal hammer, once started working with metals, I had to be introduce to a subject called metallurgy ,the subject really helped how to understand the metal that i was working with, Metallurgy is define as 1 the branch of science and technology concerned with the properties of metals and they production and purification. 2 the technique or science of working metals so as to give them certain desired shapes or properties www.dictonarycom. Metallurgy helped me understanding the physical and chemical behavior of metallic element, their intermetallic compounds and they alloys, because once start transforming metals there is some step to follow to create the piece needed

According to what I understood first year was a year of funding myself and making sure if is something that I could continue studying and make it as my carrier.

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I ended up falling in love with the course and I decided to continue with jewellery; as a second year , compare to the first year that was an initiation to jewellery my second year in the jewellery department was the most challenging year because it was a year of developing , understanding and learning how to make proper jewelleries, based more on to precision every measurement had to be right and precise, every mechanism had to work nicely, every line had to be straight ,every wire had to be round