Central Saint Martins: Where the World’s Top Designers Come From

Ever wondered how some of the World’s top jewellery designers get to where they are? Most assume great designers were born with a god-given talent and that moving into creating beautiful jewellery pieces came easily.
Whilst their natural talent may have been in abundance, all designers – even the World’s best – have honed their skills through hard work and, more often than not, excellent tuition at design institutions.
Lolo & Galago has many links to one of these in particular, with several of our World class designers having graduated from the prestigious Central SaintMartins in London, widely recognised as one of the greatest design universities in the World.

We caught up with Caroline Broadhead, CSM’s BA Jewellery Design Course Leader, to find out how the World’s future Creative Directors are taught, and why she believes CSM stands out. 

Unlike scientific subjects, with design there are no set rules. Nevertheless, Caroline very much believes there is a process to be followed. “It’s about looking, thinking and then combining those ideas” she explains. “Designers need to have a great awareness of their interests.” To help students do this and keep constantly engaged with the World around them and its inspirations, all CSM students keep a book of inspiring text, images and photos throughout their time at the university. 

Whilst every student approaches design in their own way, Caroline explains it is important that they understand a process from initial concept right through to final design. This means developing an original idea, looking at technical details and materials – and using this technical understanding to present the concept into a first designs. Then, test the design both visually as well as physically. This allows them to expand their concept and keep iterating until a final design is created. 

With so many stages, we wondered what the hardest part of being a designer is. “The hardest part of the process is the design development: Taking your initial ideas from your head and creating that first physical concept from those ideas is tricky for a lot of students” explains Caroline. To help with this, students are given project briefs, in which they are given very narrow guidelines for a design. This forces the students to delve deeper into that specific subject rather than take a broad approach, causing them to use their imagination to an even greater level.

This is all well and good, but of course a truly talented designer creates beautiful work not only for themselves but also for their customer, and this is something that needs to be ingrained into all future designers’ ways of thinking. Caroline explains that all students are encouraged to have an ongoing dialogue with clients. One of the great things about CSM is that many fashion and jewellery firms get involved – currently they have 13 companies working on projects with students – which allows them to practice working with their customer and learning how to anticipate what will be popular.

So what makes CSM stand out amongst most other universities? “London is inspirational,” says Caroline. “There is so much to be taken from the city, and it attract sambitious and talented students from the outset, so we are starting with a lot of raw talent. We also work with industry regularly, which gives great connections and real-life experience.”

We were curious to know what the head of jewellery design thinks are the most important qualities in a designer – we were given three. “A positive attitude. You can’t give up and have to keep working. Energy and an excitement for your surroundings, awareness of trends and a feel of today’s styles.”

We couldn’t agree more, they are all qualities we see in abundance with Lolo & Galago’s designers, and from this we have created ground breaking collections that are true exotic luxury, and we are sure much of this has come thanks to CSM’s excellent early influence. 

What makes jewellery high quality?

A common question we get asked by many women is what makes one piece of jewellery ‘luxury’ when another one is considered a lower quality?

It’s an understandable concern for women when making a jewellery purchase, particularly when looking at luxury brands, and we have therefore produced a very quick guide to help you better understand the world of luxury jewellery. We’ve split our guide into 5 simple sections.

1. What is it made of?
Nearly all luxury jewellery is made of platinum, gold or silver. These precious metals can come in different levels of ‘fineness’ which just means how pure the metal is.
Gold fineness is measured in ‘carats’: 24k is pure (100%) gold, 18k is 75% and 14k is 50%. 
Silver pureness is measured as a number: 925 silver (also known as sterling) means it is 92.5% silver. 950 (Britannic) silver is 95%.
You can check the type of metal and fineness on any piece of jewellery by looking at its hallmark - a tiny stamp near the designer’s name which legally confirms what the piece is made of.
There is nothing wrong with not having 100% pure precious metal- in fact, hardly any jewellery is ever made of pure precious metal as it would be too soft to use.

 

2. Does it have plating?
When done properly, plating has many advantages to luxury jewellery:
- When silver is plated by a metal that doesn’t tarnish, like gold or rhodium, the jewellery will not dull.
- Rhodium is often used over white gold as well, as it has a much brighter white colour to it.
- Plating often allows for a beautiful, smooth finish too.
When looking at jewellery, you will need to ask about the plating. If the jewellery is described as gold vermeil, this means it is silver jewellery plated in gold to a high standard- the gold must be at least 3 microns thick and 10 carats and the silver must be 925.
Check the plating thickness too- the thicker the plating, the longer it will last before it begins to wear. In our experience, 3 microns is enough to last many years.
True luxury pieces will have even plating across the whole piece- look closely at corners, niches and complex areas of the piece and check that the colour and surface is even. If it is, it has been plated well and is a quality piece of jewellery.

3. Stone settings
Look very carefully at how stones are set - this is one area that luxury, designer jewellery really stands out in. Stones are set in many different ways, so we’ve made a quick checklist of things to look for depending on the setting type.

Claw setting
- Check the stone doesn’t wobble
- Check the claws are mounted evenly around the stone, so they are equal distances from each other
- Hold the piece to see the claws underneath the stone- do they run along its edge neatly? If not it will come loose more easily
- Look at the tops of the claws edge on. They should be of uniform thickness and not too thin at the points
- Make sure the tops of the claws come far enough up the stone to hold it securely

Pave setting (when there are lots of small stones mounted together)
- Check very closely to make sure all the small stones are secured from 4 sides
- Pave is made by small ‘drops’ of metal covering over the edges of each stone. Make sure they cover enough of the stone to keep it secure
- Look edge on - the stones should be set almost flush with the surface of the jewellery or they will easily fall out

Bezel setting (this is when a stone is mounted by metal all around its edge)
- Look closely along the edge of the stone- there should be no gaps or ‘wobbles’ with the metal
- The metal edge should come smoothly over the top of the stone and enough to hold it securely

4. Surface and polish
This is another area to look closely at as it makes a big difference to the overall look of the piece. Luxury jewellery brands such as Lolo & Galago use a two stage polish, whereby an initial polish of the surface is followed by a finer hand polish. Looking closely at a piece under a bright light, if you move it around in your hand you can see if the surface has any imperfections- slight dents, variations of depth or any texture to it. A well polished piece should be perfectly smooth and almost radiate with light.

Following the above may be simple ways of checking, but the work and quality of finishing that happens behind the scenes is anything but simple. It’s something we hope you’ll notice with all our collections.