Alchimia

After Amsterdam, I went back to Tallinn briefly to pack up and to say goodbye and then back to Italy to attend a Repousse workshop in Tuscany! (more on that later). I spent a few days in Florence before the workshop started and I was able to visit Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School.




That's Manuel Vilhena on the left and Doris Maninger on the right. Doris and Lucia Massei founded Alchemia in 1998 and it runs as a private, 3-year, full-time study, contemporary jewellery school. The teachers and past lecturers include Manuel (above and previously posted about here) Manfred Bischoff, Giampaolo Babetto, Helen Drutt-English, Arline Fisch and Peter Skubic amongst many other luminaries. The idea of a private jewellery school on this scale seems very odd to an Australian who paid (relatively) little for her education. but when you remember that college fees in America and some European countries are in the tens of thousands it starts to make more sense. Alchimia takes students from all over the world and the language of the school is English.




The physical size of the school is quite small but the workshops are clean, neat and well equipped.




The students were setting up for the graduating show while I was there but unfortunately I was leaving before it opened. A few years ago Alchimia did a collaborative project with The Estonian Academy of Art and the result was an exhibition called Twilight

.