Career in jewellery designing – With India’s gold revenue hitting the mark at over 13 billion dollars, jewellery designing is fast growing as an attractive and lucrative career option.
Do you have the creative zeal in you for making intricate designs?
Have you ever made wonderful personalized gifts using small pieces of jewellery for your friends?
You can now make an attractive yet lucrative career out of your creativity and design sense.
India being the largest consumer of gold in the world, jewellery designing is a mushrooming industry with several artistically-minded people waiting to be discovered.
While there are some short-term jewellery design courses, professionals from different walks of life can become an expert jewellery designer with various kinds of jewellery to sculpt and carve. There is a huge market that befits this profession where you can let out your passion and creative potentials to create beautiful jewellery pieces out of clay, paper, plastic and fabric, apart from metal and stone.
Many renowned institutes of India offer diploma courses from 3 months to 3 years duration in jewellery designing that provide necessary information on colour coding schemes, polishing, giving a finishing touch, drawing techniques, making and designing of ornaments, etc. Pursuing programs from National Institue of Fashion Technology (NIFT) or National Institute of Design (NID) can help you in working as an intern with a well-known jewellery house brand as you will be able to interact with foreign faculty, attend conferences, trade fairs, build up on networking and present yourself for showcase events too.
You may need to invest Rs. 10-11000 for an online gemmology course while a full-fledged 4-year diploma course can cost you about Rs. 20 lakhs.
Computerized programmes like JewelCAD, AutoCAD, AutoCAM are used for such courses and can be helpful to students to easily and quickly make and store designs, enabling them to produce those designs when in demand.
If you have the designer’s creative skills, work with the precision of a highly skilled artisan and have knowledge of precious stones and metals, you can commercialise this art by exploring many options in Jewellery designing, viz. Goldsmith, Artist Jewellers, Fashion Jeweller, Custom Jeweller, Stone-Setter, Crafts Jewellery Maker, Hand Engraver, Model Maker, Silversmith or Production Bench Worker.
While starting off, you can pursue elementary courses on design and composition and can explore courses dealing with niche designs from Indian and western styles. You can also learn about retailing jewellery and develop marketing skills. While some institutes have placement cells and affiliations with upcoming jewellery brands or big names in the market, you can also opt to start off your own venture. Choosing a gemmology course can also secure you a job in well-known grading labs in the country.
Training yourself to become a design teacher can also be helpful in not only developing your skills better, but also in minting money.
Designing jewellery needs sourcing raw materials, setting up and maintaining a workspace, hiring artisans and staying abreast of upcoming trends in the market in forms of latest technology, fashion and precious metals while marketing for the product. As a jewellery designer, you need to look into both the commercial and aesthetic aspects of the art and cater to its usage in the modern times.
India offers many lucrative job opportunities for this profession. The pay package can range between Rupees 7000- Rs. 20,000 or more, while renowned designers earn about a lakh per month. The moolah can depend on your education and experience in the field. Working as a freelancer will work for you only if you can rely on your creativity and marketing skills.
The profession offers limitless opportunities to earn as much as you can or want to.
While there are challenges in this field with the uncertainty of pricing, that is, creating fabulous pieces within a good price amount and the highly competitive market with upcoming jewellery designers each day.
Also, a jewellery designer working with prestigious brand requires essential managerial skills.
There is not much advertising done for job opportunities in jewellery designing and making a mark or carving a niche in the industry can be quite demanding.
However, there is also the promise of transcending jewellery designing to foreign shores and the wedding exuberance in India gives more of an opportunity to make it a rewarding career option. There are also many foreign customers who show much interest in rare jewellery pieces.
So indulge as a creative jewellery enthusiast to transform precious stones into priceless jewellery and make a luxurious career for yourself, to earn dollars both at home and in the global market.
