Workshop

The making of jewelry is not work that is devoid of physical toil. The ingots, the plates, the silver, gold, and platinum and  palladium wires and tubes are not easy to roll, to bend, to turn or to draw. This is not work that can be done lightly and definitely not with the fingertips alone.

The worker, that person who is making a piece of work, must put all his heart into the task, invest all of his knowledge, use his imagination, his talent and exert far more strength than one might easily imagine.

In order for the worker to constantly produce an item of great quality, he will need to take his time while observing each of the steps with great care.

The Workshop

The workshop is situated on the 1st floor of the boutique (jewelry store). The workshop is fitted out with three workbenches each equipped with a bench pin which is a piece of wood on which the jeweler works and a sheepskin which is used to gather the precious metal fillings.  This is where Michel Zimmermann and his two sons, Pierre and Vincent can be found at work every day.

The tools which they use daily are relatively simple tools. They consist in fine saws, big and small files, clamps, a hammer, a soldering blowtorch, chisels, emery paper, pincers and tweezers, a magnifying glass, a dry nib compass, a must in precision work, a sliding foot, a wire drawplate to draw the wires of different dimensions, drills and milling cutters used for mounting and setting stones. Many other small unusual tools are also used for the making of jewelry.

The design

In the field of precious metal and precious stone jewelry, all of the designs and sketches are always made to a scale of one. Consequently, both the design and the piece of jewelry are of the same size. The intelligibility of the piece of jewelry and of all of its aspects is thus clear for everyone. Beautiful pieces of jewelry come from respecting a well thought out design and then handcrafting it in the traditional way and also, from a good interpretation of its volume.

One must not lose sight either of the work material: the precious metals, be it silver, 18ct gold or platinum for the precious metal jewelry, the precious stones, semi-precious and fine stones, the ornamental stones and the pearls for the precious stone jewelry.

The creation of a piece of jewelry can be done straight on paper from a sketch and colored drawings. The search for the right stones, which is not always so easy a task, can be done later.

The other means of creation in jewelry making consist in first choosing one or several stones which in turn, by their shape, color and brilliance, draw out the inspiration of the creator.

Michel Zimmermann’s ideas are simple. His designs and sketches are readable at first glance. Sometimes, additional details or more numerous elements are added to attract a second look, to catch the attention a little longer, to make one linger, much as happens when one is in love. Creation and love as a way to conquer death a little by adding a shot of the everlasting into life.

The making process, introduction

Nowadays, jewelry, at least a considerable amount of it, is cast. Casting is a method for reproducing items, using rubber moulds, wax and plaster. At each step of the way, imprecision, flaws and weaknesses pop up. The quality of such jewelry is not the best. Moreover, casting does not allow for the full freedom of creation that can only come from handcrafting.

Fortunately, work that is hand-crafted gives authenticity to the work in addition to ensuring  greater sturdiness, greater density and unsurpassable precision.

The wary customer will both see and appreciate that he is purchasing work that was done with honor and love, by human beings and not by machines, using the right materials in order to provide true pleasure and durability.

Each and every piece of jewelry made by Michel Zimmermann and his sons, Vincent and Pierre, is entirely made by hand and never cast.

The quality in the making of a piece of jewelry or of any other object rests on three fundamental principles.

First of all, the quality of the raw material: the choice of precious metals, the choice of very beautiful precious and semi precious stones, the choice of magnificent pearls, which through the senses of sight and touch, allow one to appreciate the wonders of a beautiful piece of jewelry.

Next, comes the sufficient quantity of the material: the choice of the quantity of material is indeed directly determined by the sturdiness, the durability of the piece of jewelry in addition to the proportion and balance of the different materials which will be used in its composition.

Finally, the competence of the worker, which includes his knowledge in the right order and in the many steps in the making process, added to the two previous principles, allow the precious metal jeweler and precious stone jeweler to bring to life most fabulous pieces of jewelry.

The Main stages of production

The making of an ingot is attained by using a blowtorch to melt a small quantity of metal which is then poured into an ingot mould. The latter is made of two pieces of steel that slide laterally in order to produce ingots which are more or less large.

The rolling mill is used to gradually reduce the thickness of the ingot, the plate or the planished plate. This is done by two steel rollers rotating in opposite directions. This operation greatly increases the density of the metal and is responsible along with the thickness chosen at the start, for the sturdiness of a piece of handcrafted jewelry. The greater the density of the metal, the greater too the brilliance from the polishing.

Tracing consists in drawing directly onto the metal the contours of each element that will go into the making of the piece of jewelry. A compass, such a wonderful tool for drawing parallel lines, circles, symmetrical points, for making straight angles, for comparing dimensions, a small ruler, a steel needle, a pen dipped into India Ink, such are the main instruments which the precious metal jeweler and precious stone jeweler will use. Templates are also helpful in copying the same design over and over.

The shaping of a round or square wire from an ingot whose length is superior to its width, is obtained by using a wire drawer and a wire drawplate, a steel plate on which a series of holes has been pierced at a graduating scale of 1/10th of a millimeter. Ring shanks, some bands and bracelets, small settings, hinges, the claws used to hold the stones are all made from wires.

The cutting is sometimes done with shears, but the jewelers’s saw is the tool that is mostly used. This saw (3/10th of a millimeter) is handled manually as it allows for the precision cutting of a variety of shapes.

The filing is done with files of many shapes and sizes. There are flat files, square files, round, triangular ones or still oval and cross files. The files are the tool which is used to get curved, deep or flat surfaces.

The drawing is done with a hammer and dapping tools, sometimes too with small chisels. This is how volume, life and a third dimension to the cut pieces is achieved.

Soldering is used to firmly join two pieces of metal together. It is done by melting the soldering fusion at a slightly lower temperature than that of the melting point of the two pieces to be soldered. The unobtrusiveness and the placement of the soldered part, the point of fusion at the highest temperature possible, the quantity of the soldering material kept to a minimum are all signs of work well done.

Emery paper is used to make the surface of the metals the smoothest possible leaving  no trace of filing. The quality of this operation allows for an easier and nicer polishing while at the same time complying perfectly with all the shapes of each piece of jewelry.

The polishing which is done with a buffing composition, (an extremely fine powder mixed in with a bonding complex), with a felt buttress or a buffing disk made out of cotton or strips of cotton, is what gives that perfect smoothness and brilliance to the jewelry.

The setting consists in overlapping the stone that is to be set or
mounted, with a small quantity of metal to prevent the stone from moving back up to the surface. However, a stone that is well seated before being set or mounted can neither move down nor move sideways. There are a numerous kinds of settings: the closed setting, the bulk setting, the calibrated setting, the claw setting, the clamp setting, the star setting, the invisible setting, the mysterious setting, The technique used in the setting plays a part in the beauty of a piece of jewelry and must be decided upon right from the very first designs.

Once the setting is done, a last polishing will bring out the final luster. Once all of these steps have been done, the piece of jewelry, handcrafted in the workshop situated at 46, Côte de la Fabrique, is now ready to move down into the boutique and be available also over the Internet.