Report by Dr. Laurent-Max De Cock
Associate Professor at Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp
I think about this topic that will often read many same stories from England, Netherlands, Germany or some other Europe country. Of course I know the new trends very well, but as a life attitude, we need to work to be original and follow our heart, no trends, and to question our selves what is our interests and why? Originality start from hard work and honest development in your brief without any copy or using of new materials only for being original, for young people very difficult to avoid to be influenced from outside especially the new fashion trends!
From my person point of view, I would like to write about education, when and why of using new materials, and a little of my experiences in the field of titanium.
Royal Academy of fine arts in Antwerp will be 350 years old in 2013 and the jewelry department was founded in this academy since 1968, so already 40 years experience in the jewelry field and the first one in the Flanders (Dutch part of Belgium). Still we are very proud to keep some traditional value in education, our students just made the choice for our academy because the last reason.
As I know some current academic trends. I’m not always agree with the new developments, I mean to start too conceptual with new students, they need to understand how to express first and what material are proper to work with, yet more and more students hear from other teachers that skill is poison for the creative mind. Yes it is if you give skill! But on the other side a creative mind with good skill goes hand in hand.
A creative mind without a good practicing principle or skill a creative mind, and more frustrated is that he depends on asking some professional to make his works. Something is missing when someone else make the jewelry instead of the artist himself, we see many times a piece without soul of the creative mind. When we talk about Product design, the condition is different; it can be made by a factory because it is designed as a product. Product design jewelry is more and more common in Europe, from Germany to Belgium.
Personal artistic work is really different from a product design jewel. This latter (product) is just one option we teach, but we are not for products design option, although we have a product design option in our association, but not for jewelry. In Germany you have some institutes specializing in product design jewelry and better supported by companies for this reason. It is just because we aren’t so explicit as a jewelry product design school that it is hard to find sponsors in machinery and specialized tools.
Currently in Europe, more market – orientated designers are only concerned about finding customers via gallery shops, which is supported by many galleries in Europe. Of course a student needs to find a way to survive in this too fast and hard world, when one style or trend so rapidly fallow another, mainly for new found techniques and materials. But read very well! I’m not against these (new?) trends/developments from my view, the student needs an academic education from the beginning – research and investigation supported with the first principle (basic metal technique) that in fact takes much more time to know, and more power, which is hard to learn by heart and needs a lot of time to understand certain character/quality of metal or other different materials.
I see that many factories offer a good service. If the students only learn to work with the computer 3D, and the factory will copy it in wax or other new materials. If students don't learn the hard way anymore, they will never know how the material feels when working with it. We give all information to our students, if we know something new (materials/techniques) on the market we will tell them, but we also tell them the pitfalls by searching too often in the easy way. I try to protect our students from adopting the easy way too fast, cause when they work alone after the graduation they have the feeling they know nothing about and still depend on factories and this cost them a lot of money and they will end in a big disappointment where we have part on, so we need to protect young people and give them the right information on all problems that occur automatically in the real world.
A good example I can give is David Huycke. He is a real professional in metal art field; very honest in his work and original. Why? Because it is rare to find someone as David who works very hard and highly skilled. I think that David will tell the difference and reason why to master metal techniques; he understands the character of the related metal materials, which is so important for metal artists. Please don't get misunderstood; I do not just pay more attention to the old way of jewelry making, or against using new materials and techniques in contemporary jewelry. On the contrary, I support our students with the knowledge to keep them informed.
Our education on the Royal Academy is in fact a mixture of old and new cause we can't deny the past to understand the new, so our students have more choices of how they like to develop their study, and how to deal with personal freedom and what freedom means in fact in their mind and work. I myself have taken a very long time to be familiar with working and investigation in titanium---this new material and its related techniques, ---to finish and then to color with even full colors in anodization. Titanium for me is already the past, but still new in another sense. Why I made the choice to work in titanium?
There were some important reasons, first my passion for color as a painter, and it goes back to my childhood (another long story). Long time ago I visited an Art exhibition in Brussels and saw someone who was working only with color tiles, I couldn’t get enough to see the beauty of the combination, it gave me back those deep missing feelings of childhood. Some were asking me why I was looking so long at the work, I was quiet and on the other hand very restless, I found no way to talk about it, for I was so deep touched and couldn’t speak out, just dreaming how can I create in metal such beautiful colors to get back my deep passion.
The second reason was the shortcoming of money. In the past, good solutions were already done by research to allow working with affordable materials, only using a little gold with patinated silver (1980). At that time it was not common and acceptable as a real jewelry piece, especially when diamond was combined. I remember once when exhibiting my works in Washington US (1983), I was asked by some American visitors why I use the gold inside the ring and a cheap material like silver outside, my answer was that the finest metal only touches the body and is not necessarily to be shown, cause it is the wearer who must feel the precious metal. They were so surprised about the thought, because they never think about it. Sure of that, cause in this world many people like to show how wealthy they are. So far on my journey to search for good affordable materials, I finally found the metal of my favorite, and this was titanium that can be colorated. In Germany, they have already worked and investigated to make jewelry with this material, and photo etching as well, still not to my satisfaction, it was too much two-dimensional. I started working in titanium in 1985 and not aware of the many problems I would meet. The metal in itself isn’t so expensive, this wasn’t a problem. I was thinking for tantalum or niobium, cause you can colorate them too and they are much softer to work with. My mind was poisoned to create 3D forms in color metal, but these two last materials are more expensive and difficult to find a small amount. I did a lot of research to find a solution; it took years before I had some small success. To work with this material you need to know a lot of knowledge in metal techniques, and when start with titanium you paradox could make you forget all. It is a complete different way of thinking; you are obliged to be very inventive in construction and connecting. Soldering wasn’t possible, but my aim was a 3 dimensional object.
One after another problem I solved by repeating again and again, finishing and bending were such problems for example, even they told me ‘you can’t polish titanium by hand’, yet I proved the opposite. Than to bent titanium without damage the metal was also one remark, ‘it isn’t possible’, but here I found a solution too. It sounds like a tour of forcing oneself, but I never meant to show that you can do impossible things. My aim was still to form a 3 dimensional color object, bigger in size and not heavy. The success has to do with strong beliefs, I have thus learnt to know how far one have to go, it is just the tedious hard work that can offer successful results, never give up. When someone finishes gold or silver jewelry he knows how long it takes when he finishes. With titanium it takes at least three times longer or even more, that’s why many of them give up and say ‘it isn’t possible’.
After this struggle, another struggle was in sight: coloration with equal deep colors. First, an explanation of the difference between anodization of aluminum and titanium, I did both the techniques, and this is why I can compare. The equipment looks the same, but it is different. Aluminum needs more steps to colorate, and the color is real color liquid you use after anodization, more calculation is needed to do it properly, David LaPlantz, an American jeweler, is specialized in making anodized aluminum jewelry. The color of titanium is quiet different from aluminum, it has to do with the interferences when light reflects back through the oxidized layers. Every layer you build up by anodization gives another color from yellow as the start to green as the end, when one goes further you can have mixed colors. It is all theoretical till you start, then the real problem occurs for getting an equal color without bad spots. You need to know your chemicals and the right steps, and be aware of the danger too. In the beginning I search advice from a chemist who helps me a lot about how to do it. Also I told him that the existing electrolyte was of too pastel color and asked if he could make electrolyte that can give deeper colors. The electrolyte he prepared was a complete new concept; you only need a strong balanced rectifier in high voltage, and then use it well to get, for example, the deep green color. During the complete process of investigation, I still met problems. The separate titanium pieces fitted correctly at first, yet when I started with the coloration process, it happened many times that the pieces by connection suddenly didn’t fit as before. So you need also to calculate how much you may loose in size by stripping the metal for cleaning before anodisation (stripping is cleaning with the dangerous liquid ‘fluorine hydrogen’,
luckily in 4%). When using a second metal in the titanium for making some connections easier, I met problems again, because the second metal worked as an obstruction resulted in many bad spots. Here I also find myself a very good solution. My conclusion: even if the technique is known, you should work in your personal way thinking nobody can help. Only with many failures and determination can one be familiar with a certain technique, cause you need first to know the hard manner before you can work freely, in other words, it’s challenging, first the metal control you, after almost an impossible mission, it’s your turn to control, finally you are aware of the limits. When one reaches this point he is free and can create without restriction. It feels like a dream comes true. I forgot to tell, I also searched for books on how to work this metal titanium. At that time there wasn’t internet, I visited many bookstores, but didn’t get any useful information except coloration. Even now I can’t find good answers on internet about how to work 3 dimensional
in titanium. In fact I haven't problems in which kind of materials an artist likes to express, it is his choice. In many cases when they thinks that if you work with new materials, the jewel becomes automatically original, they just make a huge mistake, since originality has to do with personal
honest development, not simply the new material. It’s the same with the use of new techniques. When personal development goes hand in hand with research and investigation we can talk of originallity! Using old techniques for me is the same, it can be original if you take into account the research and investigation that leads to a personal point of view, and that brings a new result.
Maybe you need to know what kind of materials we investigate in our academy. We work with materials that are already researched; I myself don't investigate in creating new materials, instead I investigate in how to work with new materials as well the limits they have. To know more about the compounding we ask information from the factory which supplies newly found materials. We know many techniques, but techniques are just techniques. Our students need to work first in the normal way to understand the honest and difficult work, doing more research in the given topics of the assignment. Also we haven't the necessary tools, such as laser and many new types of machinery, so we teach students to learn to be creative with fewer tools, and in fact that is not bad as a first principle. Maybe working with new materials is a new trend in itself, but not necessarily new in appearance or outlook. It is true that you have new ways, which was impossible in the past, like working with laser and laser copy, the latter is already known to many factories in China, as well
as electroforming in pure gold which was invented almost 20 years ago. There are some factories in Hong Kong and Shenzhen with the knowledge from England/German factories. All new found materials/techniques are already used for commercial purposes, so for the first bachelor students, even when the new materials/techniques are known, it is still new in their eyes and of course it is understandable. And in a sudden some succeed very well to find new ways to express. It makes me happy when seeing their passion which makes it worth to teach. A passionate student makes a passionate teacher. Conclusion: Taking into account of how difficult it is to invent new ways with existing materials/techniques, new or older, it is hard to be creative if you in the first place do not master your skill, which is necessary for developing yourself into a free thinking artist. It doesn’t
come to you; you aren’t born with all these talents. Practice, work hard with a clear purpose, then passion comes to you and never stops, NEVER. If you think you know it all, you have a lot to learn.
It also counts for me!
