Watch The Jewellers Retreat Season 2
I’m excited to share about The Jewellers Retreat, a show that I am involved in as a producer and a guest expert. The first episode goes live this week and here is a behind-the-scenes look.
In case you didn’t see, in 2021 Jewellers Academy made a 3 episode show called The Jewellers Retreat. Every day over three days, three Diploma students made jewellery with a brief and a time limit. I was a producer of the show so was involved in all of the planning and organising. I can also be seen in every episode in the business tips section with Jessica Rose. You can binge watch season 1 now!
Season 2
In season 2, which was filmed in summer 2023, we had a similar format with three Advanced Diploma jewellers making designs for three days. You can watch the trailer here.
The students this year were all Advanced Diploma students so have been learning for longer. There is a lot of different techniques demonstrated including a lot of stone setting. And tools, some of which I had never seen before!
Behind the scenes
Jessica Rose lives on the south coast of England and I live in Edinburgh in Scotland. We have worked together since 2012 and speak on the phone weekly for long periods at a time! The planning of the series was done over the phone and on Zoom. We use a regular film crew, Motion Fish, for all our filming and they filmed season 1 as well so they are familiar with filming close-up jewellery-making work.
The weekend before I was meant to be travelling to England I got ill. It was typical with months of planning and two years between the shows. I rarely get ill and this wasn’t the time! I had a temperature over the weekend and was worrying about travelling but my temperature went back to normal by the time I was meant to fly and I went. I knew that it wasn’t Covid or anything contagious (I would not have travelled). But by the time I travelled the 350 miles I was drained.
I was very fortunate that one of the jewellers on the Retreat is a doctor! She took a look at me and diagnosed tonsillitis and helped me get some antibiotics. Sadly I was recuperating for most of the week and actually wasn’t able to be as much a part of the show as was originally planned. But I was able to film the business segments with Jess on our final morning of filming. And we did each one in one take! We’re very used to working together in co-teaching sessions and I’m sure that helped! I am so glad now that we were able to film that and I don’t look too ill! The antibiotics has started to take effect.
My thoughts
I have had a sneak peek at the first edits of all the episodes, and they are brilliant. You don’t have to be into jewellery making to enjoy them. If you love shows like The Repair Shop, Bake Off, Sewing Bee and, of course, All That Glitters, definitely give it a watch!