Main Line Art Center

This place offers a variety of classes and i can speak for the Beginner Jewelry class with Dawn Bergmaier, since i’m taking that right now (winter 2012). the bottom line is that the class is great and i’d recommend taking it.
the class teaches you «design layout, piercing, forming, basic construction, filing, soldering, coloration and finishing.» i’ve also learned pickling, annealing, riveting, and print rolling (onto metal, of course), and that was all in just the 5-​week course! there’s a standard 11-​wk workshop but i wanted to try the shorter one just to get my feet wet and see if i liked it. if you take this class, don’t forget your earplugs! there’s lots of hammering going on.
no prior metalshop experience was required, and although i’ve worked in both wood and metalshops, i still learned a lot and it’s also a great class for total n00bs. one of the best things about the class is that you get to learn the foundation of jewelrymaking and techniques for working with all the tools. the other cool thing was that the class size was small — it started out with 8 ppl but dwindled down to 5.
after Dawn gives her demo, we repeated what she did and then had the freedom to make pretty much anything we wanted to. it’s great to be able to put things together with the techniques that i learned. Dawn was always helpful and open to any questions or ideas we had. She also explained things well and really poured out a lot of knowledge.
i guess since jewelrymaking is metalshop on a small scale, they don’t need floor machines like a bandsaw or a drillpress. instead we use handsaws and the flexshaft (which is really ideal for working on small pieces). the equipment seemed pretty well maintained, except for the jeweler’s bench pins.
the only drawback for me is that since it takes 1.5 hrs to commute there from center city Philadelphia (via SEPTA), and another 1.5 hrs for me to get home, i’ve been resorting to eating «dinner» on my walks to class from Haverford Station. the walk from Haverford Road to the Art Center has no sidewalks and is barely lit so that in some parts, i’ve been using my phone as a flashlight and have been carrying a huge, bright yellow bag to be more visible to passing cars.
also note that if you take the Norristown High Speed Line to get there from 69^th Street Station, you pay as you leave (not as you enter the NHSL). i didn’t know that the first time and thought it was a free transfer! If it wasn’t so far, I would def take Beyond Beginner Jewelry, and perhaps some other classes here.