Jonathan Swan is as creative and imaginative as the exquisite jewellery he crafts at The Workshop on the High Street in Lewes.
For him, creating beautiful works of art from precious metals and jewels is a way of life – one he can’t imagine ever giving up.
“I’m an extraordinarily lucky bloke,” he says. “Making jewellery is a fantastic thing to do, a great way to make a living – and I’ve been able to do what I love for the past 38 years.
“Although I’m now coming up to retirement age, I feel as though I am just starting out and I certainly don’t plan to retire. Later in 2019 I’m taking a gap year and my wife and I will be cycling through the Andes, but I’ll be back at work again after that.”
Becoming a jeweller is far removed from the career path originally laid out for Jonathan.
“I went to a school where it was thought undignified to work with your hands, so I did a degree in psychology,” he explains. “But as I knew I wanted to do something creative I did a complete U-turn, took a year’s foundation course and then embarked on a four-year course at the Sir John Cass School of Art in London, at that time the best in Europe and probably the world.
“It was a fantastic place – a meeting point for young avant garde designers who wanted to
create something daring and different. At the same time we were able to learn traditional skills from experts, an ideal education which broadened my mind.
“It gave me the belief that if you made things people wanted, you could make a living and that’s pretty much what I did – and it’s worked out well.
Jonathan took the bold move of opening his own business in 1981 while he was still a student, and the confidence of youth paid off. He joined forces with talented local silversmith Simon Beer and together they set up their workshop in Lewes high street.
“At the start I was being creative with just a bit of business sense thrown in – I don’t know how we survived in the early days but I was very lucky and all the way through I have kept on focusing on being creative rather than businesslike.
“Before we had even opened, a local journalist saw us doing the place up and got us a half-page feature in the Daily Telegraph – that was a huge boost and got us off to a great start.”
Jonathan and Simon were both idealistic and began by just making their own jewellery designs at workbenches in a very spartan room, but they soon realised that, as their premises on the High Street had a big shop window, it provided an ideal opportunity to display their work and sell to the public.
“We went off to jewellery fairs to look at other stock we could get in, and that was fun,” Jonathan says. “Again we were lucky and everything went well as we were careful to choose the work of talented young designers. We’d also both taken on apprentices, so that meant we could produce more of our own work.
“Things went on like that for 12 years but Simon found it distracting to be involved in the selling side, so he decided to leave.
“It was a very amicable split. We never had so much as a cross word or a difference of opinion in all the time we had worked together, even when he was leaving. But because of his leaving I found myself suddenly working on my own for the first time and terribly in debt as I had to buy him out.”
Despite that setback, Jonathan continued to put creativity first but also began to consider how to develop his business. He teamed up with another local craftsman to produce a range of silver seashell jewellery which were very popular at big jewellery shows all over the country.
“It was quite exciting as, after about nine months of experimentation, we were producing something original and different which no-one had done before. After 15 years in business I was trading outside Lewes for the first time, I enjoyed striking up friendships with other jewellery
makers exhibiting at these shows.”
However, Jonathan then began to suffer breathing problems because of the chemicals used in the seashell production process so he reverted to focusing on the increasing number of commissions being generated by his growing reputation for exquisite one-off pieces.
One of the most striking of these was for a necklace in platinum and diamonds for a Swiss billionaire which took several months to fully complete the design.
“When I am doing a commission I like to find out about the person I’m making it for,” Jonathan says. “I want the piece to be about them, so I don’t feel the urge to put my personal stamp on it.
“Before starting on that necklace I discovered the lady loved walking and was also knowledgeable about flowers. This inspired me to create Alpine flowers, each link of the necklace a different flower with a diamond in the centre. I also made a special box for it, inscribed with the Latin names of all the flowers.”
Another very special commission last year was for a leading actresses in Game of Thrones.
Finding the essentially personal element for every commission comes easily to Jonathan, whose gentle humour and friendliness makes him easy to relax with and open up to.
“Jewellery can mark so many life events and it’s wonderful to play a part in that. Often it’s for a happy occasion but sometimes it can be to remember someone who has died.”
“Throughout my career I’ve liked making things for young people in love – sometimes I’m the first person they tell they are going to get married which is an incredible privilege. I’m extremely proud when I create rings to make people remember the day they got married – that’s very sentimental.”
Jonathan’s favourite and most unusual
commission of all was making wedding rings which are totally unique for a couple who didn’t have a lot of money to spend.
“A girl came in and said she’d heard I made rings. I explained that what she had to do was go away and talk about it with her fiance. She didn’t come back for quite a while as he was working away, but when she did return she said he seemed unimpressed by the idea.
“However, he then phoned me the next day and said that, although they were broke as he only had a part-time job, he was positive they would make it through life together.
“Because they had so little money, he wanted me to make rings with no value! That was an excellent brief but quite tricky. If you make something out of cheap materials, it looks cheap and isn’t really satisfactory. We discussed it, but it was important to both of them that the rings should be genuinely ‘free’.
“The two things in life which really are free are air and water. So I made rings which everyone thinks are wedding rings but are in fact shells. I went out and got rainwater from the gutters, half-filled the shells and welded them together with the water locked in. When you shake them, you can hear the water sloshing gently around.”
As the business has evolved, Jonathan’s business partner Simon had stocked The Workshop with pieces created by young, innovative designers, some fresh out of art school and full of original ideas – making breakthrough jewellery but all meeting his own high standards.
“I look for really good work that fits in with my ethos that each piece should contain interesting elements – that’s the most important thing. Of course some people want expensive diamonds and platinum but I have always said it would be awful to have anyone leaving my shop empty-handed just because they didn’t have enough money.
“So we have some jewellery at top-end prices but also have pieces priced at just a fiver or a tenner and I have new designers coming in all the time.”
Although Jonathan acknowledges many people want extremely expensive diamonds that are distinctive for their purity, he says there are other diamonds which are just as impressive. They are remarkable for the beautiful, extraordinary patterns inside them and are very rare, so he has a small selection for customers to choose from.
As a Freeman of the prestigious Goldsmiths Company and the holder of a Goldsmiths’ innovation award, Jonathan is a very distinguished jewellery maker, but he also has a lively sense of fun and natural friendliness which makes any visit to his shop a pleasure.
At six feet five inches tall, he smilingly recounts how many people comment on his likeness either to John Cleese in Fawlty Towers or the mad professor in Back to the Future.
On a more serious level, he provides tremendous inspiration and encouragement to those who either want to learn jewellery making as a hobby or hope to earn their living in the jewellery trade.
“We run evening classes, teaching people how to make jewellery, everything from the basics to more advanced. We teach 48 people a week, 12 people per night for four nights, with two tutors and there’s a pupil-to-teacher ratio of 6:1.
“It all started with two elderly ladies who wanted to learn jewellery making, just after we had discovered a room below The Workhouse which was full of hardcore. We dug it out and created a fully-equipped workshop housing 12 workbenches. One lady has been coming to classes with us for 36 years.
“Our pupils range from school children to the retired, and the pieces they make range from the very simple to the extraordinarily complicated. Many of our pupils go on to work in the trade and they can also rent the workshop by the day or the week in daytime. A lot of retired people also like to come and work there during the day.
“Making jewellery is a fantastic thing to do and I like to inspire other people to be creative. as well as teaching them the craftsmanship and skills involved.”
“Making jewellery is a fantastic thing to do, a great way to make a living”