I graduated from highschool in the year 1997. Since then, there’s been a lot of… let’s call it noise, in my history. There were excursions to information technology, journalism, drama education and a particularly long expedition to the uncharted wilds of stage theater acting. Every misstep a step in the right general direction but less focused than today.
In the year 2007 I found my way out the jungle that is theater and started towards the path of a craftsman as I entered the school with a beast of a name, Luksia the Western Uusimaa Municipal Training and Education Consortium to study metal working.
In 2011 I graduated from Luksia as a metal artisan. There I studied blacksmithing, casting, , jewelry making, welding, soldering, and a lot of sketching. Drawing and design, history of style and the salt mine of learning through failing, an
d found a drop of dignity in the service of arts and design. During my studies I interned with a Jyväskylä based metal artist Samuli Alonen working with metal sculptures and bronze casting. My second internship was in Helsinki with an old school goldsmith Jari Saari learning the double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble of the goldsmithing trade. Mostly working with silver though.
As well as finding a professional passion of working precious metals, I found a wife and family, a passion as precious as the one of metal. We moved to Tampere in 2014, where I entered Tredu, Tampere Vocational College and the school of silversmithing and jewelry. (That’s the short translation by me. The Finnish name of the school is long and brutal to the point of shadowing Soviet bureaucracy.) There I studied more about the foundations of the craft and bumped into japanese metallurgy. For better part of a year I studied the ancient art of mokume-gane under the tutelage of the insanely verbal self-taught mokume-genius Jyri Kivistö-Rahnasto. To finish that year I wrote a study about japanese irogane alloys in mokume gane and the metallurgical properties of shibuichi. It’s in Finnish unfortunately. I will be translating it here later.
Design by Jussi Andreasen, modelling and rendering by myself.
I started my first Tredu internship in a goldsmiths atelier in Tampere because I was proficient in 3D-drawing. Somewhere along the road I had taught myself Autodesk Inventor, Rhinoceros and V-Ray. Goldsmiths Andreasen are a modern goldsmith studio who employ 3D-CAD and CNC in jewelry production. They needed someone to do 3D-modelling and rendering and they taught me CNC, jewelry design and manufacture. I was tutored by Goldsmith Reijo Andreasen and his son Jussi Andreasen. My internship lasted for 1.5 years and ended with my graduation from Tredu in Spring of 2016.
As my Tredu dissertation I took upon the subject of Art Deco, which is close to my rectilinear, geometric and streamline modern heart. I wrote a dissertation work of 70 pages about the emergence of the Art Deco style and the techniques and the significance of it to all crafts, using art deco jewelry art as a focal point. I also designed an Art Deco jewelry set, and crafted a ring from the set as my graduation work. (This dissertation text was the primary reason for starting this blog, since I intend to start translating it to English during my free time. ) I graduated with top scores and a scholarship.
Since my graduation from I’ve been on Goldsmiths Andreasen payroll designing, modelling and rendering rings, writing articles about the craft, updating their web pages, creating adverts, both static and video with Photoshop and After Effects, translating content from Finnish to English and back again, managing the CNC mills and acting as the company IT-support.
Come fall and as the wedding ring season dwindled I was accepted to a one year program in Tyrvää School of Crafts and Design that finally qualifies me as a goldsmith. Currently I study stone setting in the classical style under the strict guidance of Master Goldsmith Jyrki Karvinen. When not studying, I work with Goldsmiths Andreasen part-time, use my remaining time designing my own collections and the rest I devote to my family.
Tales from the bench pin. 