What's Cool In School

In anticipation of the first international location of L’École, School of Jewellery Arts, at Hong Kong’s K11 Musea, Zaneta Cheng signs up for class at the Paris original

It’s a chilly but sunny morning at L’École, the school of jewellery arts supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, on Rue Danielle Casanova just off Place Vendôme in Paris – perfect weather, my professors tell me, for the Wax Project And Setting Techniques class I’m taking, because the sun is crucial for all jewellery craftspeople. They should know as many of the professors who teach the Savoir Faire courses at L’École are Mains d’Or (golden hands) from Van Cleef & Arpels’ own workshops – master jewellers and stone-setters who’ve spent their lives dedicated to the craft, and all of whose worktables face the atelier’s large windows.

As they demonstrate the traditional techniques, it becomes clear that jewellery setting and wax working is anything but simple. “You put your arm on the workbench,” says stone-setter Frédéric. “And you push the bead like this. When you push into the metal, keep the pressure and only once this is done, then can you set the stone. The goal is to push thousands and thousands of beads on the metal and you make a line.”