Introduction to Jewelry (Saturday)
Adult Class | Registration opens Monday, October 20, 2025 8:00 AM EDT
In this introductory course, students will learn an array of technical processes and tools to design and create their own jewelry. Some basic techniques that will be covered include sawing, filing, riveting, surface texture, soldering, introductory stone setting, and finishing. We will also discuss the contemporary art jewelry movement, material considerations, as well as jewelry’s relationship to the body, preciousness, and social symbols. Through playful conceptual prompts, students can expect to complete two to three projects that could each take the form of a pendant, ring, brooch, pair of earrings, or small sculptural object.
What you will learn:
1. Techniques to make jewelry using metal sheet and wire
2. How to safely use specialized hand tools and equipment
3. A brief sociocultural history of metalsmithing and contemporary art jewelry
4. Creative approaches to designing your own jewelry pieces, integrating students’ artistic interests into introductory projects
Note that this classroom is accessible by stairs only; please contact Fleisher for more information.
Recommended Jewelry and Metal suppliers:
Hagstoz 709 Sansom Street. Phone: 215-922-1627
Pamma Tools 809 Sansom Street. Phone: 215-928-6004
Rio Grande: www.riogrande.com Phone: 1-800-545-6566
• Herkules saw blades 2/0 – 2 dozen (24 total)
• 3” x 3” 20 gauge copper, brass, or nickel sheet (whichever you prefer)
• 1ft. of 18 gauge round brass wire soft
• Size 56 drill bit
• Sketch book for notes and ideas
• Fine tip Sharpie
• Pencil and pen
• Old rag or t-shirt for drying metal
• Wire solder in hard, medium, and easy - 6” of each
• 220 and 320 sandpaper (2 sheets of each)
Optional:
• Chain or leather cord for a pendant
• Small found objects you are interested in incorporating into your jewelry (optional)
These supplies will be for the first projects/samples, over the course of the class you may have to purchase more metal depending on your specific projects’ designs.
Lia Musante
Lia Musante is a maker working in Philadelphia. Since their undergraduate studies in community-based oral history, they seek to link embodied storytelling with metalsmithing, using jewelry as a worn archive, and teaching in accessible art education.
Lia plays with the lifetimes objects carry to re-forge narratives of possibility. Forgotten detritus reunites with the body as sentimental jewels as part of the cycle in which man-made objects are made, found, and remade. Jewelry externalizes inner feelings, as hardware for tenderness. But this two-ness is slippery: at times the object outlasts fleeting feelings, or the feelings linger far after the object expires. By teasing apart this connection with repaired electronics, faux stones, steel, and sound, these re-linkings and re-contextualizations remember the everpresent kinship we share with our belongings and each other in the end times.