Scuola Bvlgari, Valenza, Italy
This September, the Roman jeweller Bvlgari will debut the first courses of its Scuola Bvlgari. An educational and training institute, it’s housed within the brand’s recently expanded Manifattura in Valenza—which is now the world’s biggest jewellery manufacturing site dedicated to a single brand. The Scuola Bvlgari will be managed in partnership with the Tarì Design School, and is the first school of its kind that’s housed directly within a jewellery manufacturing facility.
Scuola Bvlgari will begin with two courses in September: one on goldsmithing, and one on stone setting. The courses have been designed as points of entry into the jewellery artisan’s profession—they do not call for prior experience, simply a high school diploma and some suitable level of aptitude with one’s hands. Passion, of course, is non-negotiable.
The goldsmithing course will total 1,680 hours of study and practical training, involving a spectrum of techniques such as bending, milling, soldering, laser-cutting, fretwork, clasp and bezel creation, wax modelling, finishing, polishing, and lost-wax casting. In short, a holistic overview of the skills required to craft Bvlgari jewels. The stone setting workshop, which totals 600 hours, will zoom in—quite literally—on the fine arts of mounting gemstones using pavé, bezel, burnish, channel, prong and claw settings. The practical aspects will, of course, be supplemented by gemological studies to understand the wide world of gemstones.
Scuola Bvlgari is not, strictly speaking, the brand’s first school. It also has the Bvlgari Jewellery Academy, though that is an internal program to induct and train incoming craftspersons—with experience, that is—on the specifics of the brand’s savoir-faire. The Scuola Bvlgari, conversely, is exciting precisely because it is open to the public: offering a way in to prospective talents in an industry that can otherwise be fairly shrouded.
The Buccellati Path at Scuola Orafa Ambrosiana, Milan
To say that a Buccellati jewel is unique is an understatement. Every piece the brand creates has been touched and enhanced by human hands, using techniques that date back to the Renaissance. Modes of engraving, carving and shaping textures like the macri, rigato, ornato and modellato finishes are incredibly plush, taking hours of manual work.
This culture of gold, handworked to beautiful perfection, is what gives the Milanese jeweller, and its late founder Mario Buccellati, the nickname ‘the prince of goldsmiths’. And in order to ensure the transmission and survival of these artisanal jewellery crafts, the jeweller has made steps in education. In March last year, the jewellery brand partnered with the Milan goldsmithing school Scuola Orafa Ambrosiana to create a master’s degree in goldsmith arts course.
Here, students are trained in four specialisations: goldsmithing, chiselling, engraving and microscope stone setting. Buccellati selects up to 12 candidates a year to participate in a special path, which offers students at the jewellery school a scholarship and future employment at its ateliers. And it’s not just Buccellati itself. This educational path and its artisanal skill set includes some interested parties from the Richemont group that Buccellati is part of, including maisons like Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vacheron Constantin and Piaget.
It’s a concerted effort toward education by a jewellery brand that prides itself on unique craftsmanship—forms of creation that it’s keeping from extinction. And while this Buccellati Path partnership cements a more solid future for its craftsmanship, Buccellati and Scuola Orafa Ambrosiana have worked together before. Several years ago, the Milanese jeweller started offering input from its experienced artisans on a training course for engravers.
“Buccellati is one of the few, if not the only one, that continues this tradition of workmanship that comes from the past,” explained third-generation creative director Andrea Buccellati in September last year, at a viewing of the brand’s high jewellery in Macau. “We do schools and special courses to get the young generation to approach this kind of work. For us it is a big investment. But, you know, at Buccellati everything is made by hand. There is basically no machine. So the only way to invest and grow it is in new artisans and craftsmen.”
Patek Philippe Institute, Singapore
You’re probably familiar with Patek Philippe’s famous slogan—that you don’t actually own one of its timepieces, you merely look after it for the next generation. It’s a genius example of wordsmithing that conveys how a Patek Philippe watch can endure for decades and centuries, even.
It also reveals an interesting fact about the highest echelons of watchmaking. Unlike other fields of luxury which obsess mostly over image-building by way of celebrity placements and the like, it’s the after-sales maintenance service that a watchmaker like Patek Philippe guards most fastidiously. It might seem an innocuous aspect, but it’s at the very core of the promise and confidence the brand places in its creations.
A critical part of servicing is the watchmaker who works on a timepiece. For Patek Philippe, it’s an ongoing effort to consolidate and bring all its service centres under central control. But perhaps more vital are the first steps of training individuals and bringing them into the world of watchmaking. Enter the Patek Philippe Institute, where apprentices are trained in the craft. There are only four such institutes in the world, located in Geneva, New York, Shanghai and Singapore. The first was established in Shanghai in 2013. Its curriculum was then carried over to New York in 2015, and the Singapore chapter was established in 2017 at Wheelock Place.
The importance of watchmakers to the trade is nonpareil. Handmade timepieces require, naturally and literally, the work of skilled hands. Most brands make an effort to operate regional service centres, but the rarity of qualified watchmakers poses a constant challenge. At the Singapore service centre, for example, just 16 watchmakers work on around 1,800 full-service repairs and 3,000 essential maintenance services annually.
At the Institute, apprentices train for two years to learn the micro-mechanics of watchmaking before finishing in Geneva to attain official certification to work at Patek Philippe service centres. There are independent watchmaking schools around the world, to be certain, but a stamp of credibility like Patek Philippe’s stands apart.
Part of the brand’s particularity lies in its own certification, the Patek Philippe Seal. Introduced in 2009 on mechanical watches, it’s a set of quality standards that encompasses all materials and parts used in a Patek Philippe watch as well as the timekeeping accuracy. When it was introduced, the brand described the Seal as a “dynamic quality label”, which was proven true this year when it received several upgrades to its criteria.
Firstly, the accuracy of mechanical watches— equipped with a Spiromax balance spring in Silinvar, the fruit of the brand’s advanced research in silicon; or a traditional Breguet balance spring—must comply with a tolerance range of -1 to +2 seconds per 24 hours. It counts for nearly every mechanical movement that the brand produces today. For illustration, this range of accuracy is now aligned with that of a tourbillon-equipped timepiece, an expensive function that’s meant to improve accuracy.
The second applies to all watches certified as water-resistant: they are all now unified at water-resistant to 30m. A matter of consistency and clarity in expectations. And lastly, an expansion of the international warranty from two to five years. Patek Philippe’s apprentices will, naturally, learn in time to work on watches to these new standards. Think of it as a continuous inheritance of horological excellence, nurturing the perfection of the brand’s creations both from within—where the watches are made and cared for in servicing—and without, when it is delivered to be worn on a fortunate wrist.
L’École School of Jewellery Arts Asia Pacific, Hong Kong
In 2012, Van Cleef & Arpels inaugurated L’École School of Jewellery Arts in Paris, its offshoot with a purpose in education. The school is open to the public, with courses, exhibitions, books and more, on topics such as craftsmanship, gemmology, the art history of jewellery, and design. The reason for its creation was quite simple, as Olivier Segura, the managing director of the Asia Pacific chapter of L’École, puts it.
“Our CEO (Nicolas Bos at the time, now the CEO of Richemont) and the team around him are passionate about jewellery. And when you’re passionate about something, you want to share it,” Segura says. The trouble, though, is that bringing family and friends—much less the public—into high jewellery workshops is impossible. The preciousness of the gemstones and materials, and the quiet concentration of the work make it less than ideal for visitors. How, then, to share this passion?
The answer that Van Cleef & Arpels arrived at is warmly inclusive. A jewellery school that offers public audiences the opportunity to learn. Not for any form of profitability or self-marketing, but rather as an extension of this irrepressible fervour for jewellery. After first opening in Paris, L’École has since expanded with permanent locations in Shanghai, Dubai and the Asia Pacific school in Hong Kong at K11 Musea.
“Everyone is interested in knowing more,” enthuses Segura. “I think this is something really human, we want to discover. We’re always amazed by novelty and beauty, and we’re lucky to be in the jewellery industry because there is a lot of novelty and a lot of beauty.”
Van Cleef & Arpels has even started to tap on the geographical closeness of the Hong Kong school to bring educational exhibitions and experiences to Singapore. This year, it opened a small show on rubies at its Les Jardins Secrets exhibition space at Raffles Arcade. On display were some ruby high jewellery creations, but also rock specimens to showcase varieties of rubies from different parts of the world.
Segura also tells me of a young woman who began attending L’École classes in Paris at the age of 12. Eight years later, she had taken up further studies and became a jeweller. The school is not targeted at professionals, and Segura describes their mission instead as creating “sparkles in the eyes and minds” of their audience. But here and again, as his anecdote proves, simply being ardent can be enough to change lives. “Even if it’s one or two people that we’ve managed to transmit our passion to,” he says, “I think this battle is won.”
Vogue Singapore’s November ‘Nurture’ issue is now out on newsstands and available online.
