Jewellery - MFA

Jewellery & Silversmithing at ECA has an international reputation as one of the leading courses that produces some of the most exciting graduates every year.

Our MFA programmes help you build a body of work or collection built on your personal individual research proposal, along with support and guidance from the department's dedicated and highly experienced international staff.

Your proposal for study may build on an existing body of work or previous undergraduate practice.

You will be challenged to develop your work both creatively and conceptually though short projects and tutorial guidance. The final body of work you design and make for exhibition aims to be explorative, original and challenging.

The department’s philosophy balances material and technical innovation alongside the more traditional craft techniques and concepts of our historic discipline. Our objective is to design and create personal, individual pieces of work that push the boundaries of our subject. We want you to create the heirlooms of the future and sensory objects that enrich people’s lives, successfully reflecting both ‘thought’ and ‘practice’.

We teach you to work with and explore the use of a broad variety of materials, including precious metal, plastic, textile, enamel and stone. Maintaining high standard of hand skills and original design work is at the heart of our programme, with a commitment to help you to develop a clear and original creative voice through your drawing and making. Uniquely to other craft and design course of its kind life drawing, painting and printing continues as a key part of all four years of the programme.

Of the four major awards we have won at New Designers in the last five years, two have gone to MFA students, including the Weston Beamor CAD Design prize for Jewellery (Alexandra Von Trapp, 2015) and the Goldsmiths’ Company Award for Jewellery (Karen Donovan, 2014). We have also had multiple successes in the Goldsmiths’ Craftsmanship & Design Awards and student work purchased by major collections, including the National Museum of Scotland (Wanshu Li, 2016).