Jesper Velling

New Years Eve 2009 I took ownership of a stable block in what used to be a brewery, and is now a dream workshop. Starting with an empty space was daunting but enabled me to design the interior to be the ideal place for creating jewellery. The workshop is now a Goldsmith’s delight, the way I intended it from conception to finish. An open and friendly space where I welcome my clients and associates. A creative space where ideas are exchanged and made reality, with all the tools and techniques I have gathered over the years.

Probably you’ve never been inside a jeweller’s workshop, and maybe you’re curious as to how things are made and in what kind of environment. If you’re a dreamer prone to fantastical thinking, workshop might conjure images of a passionate fixated character working long into the moonlight hours, living and breathing life into fabulous creations, a bit like Willy Wonka. Or the more pragmatically minded will think dictionary definition of ‘workshop’ and conceive it to be a place where skilled people use effective practiced methods to make things.

The reality is somewhere in between. There are long hours working efficiently at the workbench, punctuated by many creative ‘eureka’ moments. If I said for me it is a dream place to work, I don’t mean to portray a place of chocolate waterfalls and Oompa Loompa’s melding gold, but you’d also be mistaken to think it’s a place of colourless fabrication. I say ‘dream-place’ because it a place where ‘pure imagination’ is shaped into exquisitely formed jewellery. And in words of Willy Wonka. “A thing of beauty is joy forever”.