Are you crazy about jewelry? Have you always wanted to have a taste of the beautiful goldsmith’s craft? Come file, hammer, forge, sand, solder… and get your hands dirty! The result: you proudly go home with your own ring.
Hade Quaghebeur has over 15 years of experience as a goldsmith. She makes out-of-the-box jewelry from precious metal. Her original, self-designed pieces are handmade in her own studio in the heart of Brussels. An architect by training, she views her jewelry as miniature buildings. In addition to her own collection, she also creates custom pieces.
She likes to pass on her passion: she has been a goldsmith teacher at Syntra Brussels for many years. She also teaches private jewelry workshops for beginners in her studio on the Grand Hospice site in the heart of Brussels. The jewelry workshops take place in small groups in Dutch-French-English.
This workshop is made possible by Erfgoedcel Brussel.
This workshop takes place outside.
Make an iron flower.
Forging is the shaping and ‘kneading’ of white-hot iron using a hammer and anvil. First one learns to tame the forge’s fire and to subject it to our laws. Body position and the right attitudes are most important to work safely without hurting the body.
Then follows the correct use of the hand hammer… The basic operations soon follow: stretching, cleaving, butting, folding, swelling.
The blacksmith uses many typical tools, which he can make himself. In the past, the blacksmith was the most prominent of all craftsmen: after all, every craftsman needed the blacksmith to make his iron and steel tools.
Michel Mouton graduated as a master at the Marie Haps Institute for Translators and Interpreters in Brussels. Shortly afterwards he came into contact with Alfred Habermann Sr, who would become his ‘craftsman father’. Habermann, a leading figure in European contemporary forging, would introduce him to the world of metal, and wrought iron in particular, with an eye for beauty and craftsmanship, and taught Michel how to work with respect for the body.
Michel Mouton‘s professional career consists of working with groups of people to pass on knowledge. He has been leading these types of workshops for 20 years and combines professional knowledge with didactic qualities, passion with patience.
He is multilingual, but mainly speaks the language of iron and fire.
Watch a video about Michel Mouton here, made by Erfgoedcel Brussel.
This workshop is made possible by Erfgoedcel Brussel.
This workshop takes place outside.
Forge your initials or house number into copper.
Copper can be forged into the richest relief under a light hand with small, frequent blows of a forging hammer and chisel.
You start with a drawing! Nicely align what you want to forge in your copper plate. You will engrave your drawing into your picture with a chisel. You will learn how to engrave beautiful lines without repeating. Then, little by little, use other chisels to emboss the copper between the engraved lines. It takes quite some time and skill to do this well, you have to slowly master this technique. Now just polish the copper plate a bit and you will return home with a plate on which your initials or a few numbers (your house number, your age, etc.) are embossed in beautiful relief.
Copper is a warm and soft, almost noble metal that can be forged into the richest relief under a light hand and with a lot of patience. You start off with a piece of flat, lifeless slab. Little by little, under the small, frequent blows of the driving hammer and chisel, the piece takes its shape. The workpiece is further brought into deeper relief on the soft surface of a sand-filled leather cushion. Finesse, not brute force, is the order of the day. Patience and sensitivity are involved.
Fire is also involved: under the wonderful alchemy of water and fire, the copper, which has become hard and brittle due to the many hammer blows, becomes willing and workable again. The result achieved: sun and soul in a noble material!
Instructor Ben Antrop has been professionally active as a blacksmith since 2007. “As a child, I couldn’t stay away from my father’s clockmaker’s studio. That’s where I was fascinated by art and craft, I think. My oeuvre mainly consists of ideas and thoughts that are part of my self-portrait. In dialogue with craft and nature these thoughts become installations and sculptures with pure raw materials.”
This workshop is made possible by Erfgoedcel Brussel.
