JEEVAN
JEWELLERY COLLECTION
PROJECT
Jeevan Collection
Collaborative project with Jeevan School Foundation
Vanarasi, India
"This project was born from the desire to share my passion for jewellery and creativity with an amazing and beautiful bunch of young adults I met through Jeevan School Foundation that shelters and educates vulnerable children in Varanasi. During my numerous stays since 2006, I had the chance to see them grow safe, to study and develop their full potential.
During 1 month, despite the Ganga river flood transforming the school in a swimming pool for a week, we have developed exciting jewellery collections that has been exhibited in a fair-trade café-shop in the holy city and are now for sell online. The whole collection is now displayed in At Work Gallery, in London Uk.
Half of the selling price will be given to Jeevan School Foundation."
-Aurelie Dellasanta - Varanasi, India August 2016
About the project
This is a 5 weeks length project where the participants gets immerse into a creative process of jewellery making, guided by the award wining jewellery designer Aurelie Dellasanta.
During the process is defined the group of work, the theme and inspiration, and then the technique that the group will be work on to develop their pieces.
The handmade process seeks to enrich the making skills of the participants, as well as stimulate their creativity.
the final outcome or the collection is aimed to be exhibited in a local gallery in order that the participants can show their creations and expose them.
The project has a final stage that is to promote the collection internationally as well as creating and online platform for selling the pieces.
The 50% of the resources for the commercialisation of the pieces will be going to the organisation or group of participants as a way of funding their further education.
Handmade process
Conception
Children has to respond to a given theme to develop their jewellery collection:
Create a jewellery piece/s that illustrates something which makes them feel
good, and that they want to share with others.
Researching / Designing
To respond to that brief, we have carried out an intensive design process,
collecting references and sharing thoughts. They searched for ideas
by gathering images found in books and online to create mood-boards.
Discussions were held about fulfilling experiences in their daily life. These lead to amazing designs that were developed in jewellery pieces, using the etching and photo etching techniques.
The Making
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal to create a design in relief. The drawings produced by the children were transferred on metal using different methods and resists such as a varnish or printed designs on PNP paper. The pieces of metal were deep in Ferric Chloride.for 3 hours.
Once the designs has been etched, the children have learned piercing, filing, soldering and finishing techniques to complete their pieces, piercing the outside shapes, connecting post earrings, sanding and polishing them.
They finally chose among a range of precious stones to enhance the designs that will be later properly set in Jaipur by a professional stone setter.
Exhibition / Varanasi, India
At the end of the month, the jewellery collections were exhibited for few days at Open Hand Café, a fair trade café- shop in Varanasi where globe trotters, students, social workers meet and chat around refreshing Iced Coffee.
Stone setting / Finishing
A collaboration with an stone setter in Jaipur its been done, the city of precious gemstones. The result was amazing. The pieces were finally 18 Karat yellow gold plated in London at Eliot Fitzpatrick LTD in Farringdon in London UK. The result was again above my expectation!
Exhibition/ London, UK
All jewellery pieces are displayed at the award winning jewellery gallery, At work Gallery since November 2016.
Jeevan Collection Online
The pieces has an exclusive online platform in order to be promoted and been sold on the web. The 50% of the resources for any sells will be going to Jeevan Foundation in Varanasi as a way of funding the education of the participants!
To see the pieces please go to Jeevan Collection here!.
We are fundraising for Jeevan's 2017 project!
