WHEN MATTHEW GROSS first visited San Miguel de Allende in Mexico last year, he fell in love with it, and like many Americans before him, he quickly began to factor it into his retirement plans.
“It’s a pretty magical place,” says Gross, owner of MHG Jewelry Studio in Berkley, MI. “I was ready to sell everything and to move there.”
It also inspired him to imagine what he can do to bolster a fledgling community of local jewelry makers in a scenic city with Spanish-colonial architecture while spending some time away from Michigan’s frigid winters.
Gross is in the process of building a non-profit organization within the U.S. jewelry community to help San Miguel’s jewelers obtain much-needed tools and equipment and to elevate training.
Jesus Villaverde Fuentes teaches both in his home studio, at right, shown with his wife, Alejandra, and his students, and at the Instituto Allende, above.
While San Miguel is a well-known artist’s community, the jewelry trade remains rudimentary, Gross says. “Ninety percent of the jewelry stores are a little hole in the wall, and there’s a showcase and maybe a guy is working on the bench behind it,” he says. “They make it work with whatever they have.”
Jesus Villaverde Fuentes, who leads one effort to teach the jewelry arts in San Miguel, built his kiln out of parts recovered from trash, used a 5-power magnifying glass instead of a microscope and taught himself hand-engraving with a less-than-optimal engraver before meeting Gross last year. “The skills that they’ve learned are very, very basic, which they’ve done very well with, but we have a lot to give,” Gross says. “They need better skills, better equipment. It’s a struggle to make a living. With the right tools, you never know what someone can do.”
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To date, Gross has received tool and equipment donations from Tapper’s Fine Jewelry in Michigan, AU Enterprise, Blaine Lewis of the New Approach School for Jewelers in Tennessee, and Charlotte Kearney, VP for product development at Gesswein, among others. He also raised money through a GoFundMe page to ship 500 pounds of equipment from Michigan to San Miguel. The crate also contained gemstones, findings and beads.
The focus of initial efforts has been to provide help to Villaverde, who teaches at the art school jewelry department of San Miguel’s Instituto Allende and has his own teaching studio for children, where he lives with his family and also sells vegetables and fruit.
Matthew Gross, right, is helping to equip instructor Jesus Villaverde Fuentes.
Ultimately, Gross would like to raise $500,000 to $1 million to refurbish the jewelry school, invite U.S. jewelers to teach master classes there, and to create a co-op studio, where graduate students could rent affordable space to launch their businesses.
Already, after Villaverde received the first shipment, progress is being made. Gross used FaceTime to teach him how to use the ultrasonic and the magnetic tumbler he sent. Now Villaverde has a microscope, a rolling mill, push engravers and has taught himself hand-engraving. He sends photos and videos of his progress to Gross, who says, “The skill level has gone way up.”
Gross is bringing other jewelers with him to San Miguel this winter to promote the effort and assess the community’s needs. This time, he plans to stay a month. “I asked friends in the business, and they said count me in,” Gross says.
Changing even one life at a time can have cumulative effects, he believes.
“It will be interesting to know that if Jesus does better financially, then he can give his daughter a better opportunity. Who knows what she’ll do. She might change the world. That’s the exciting thing for me; what will happen when I’m out of the picture.”
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