The School’s curriculum will be broadened to cover jewelry arts, with two to eight-week programs ranging from jewelry design to wax carving and model making.
Southeast Asia’s only gemological institution moves out of Bangkok’s Mahesak gem district September and into a new six-story building that can admit more students from around the world, says Henry Ho, founder and director of the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences.
“Classrooms will be able to hold more students, from the previous 15 to 40,” said Ho, who added this could cut the queue in the present waiting list.
In addition to the address change, the school’s curriculum will be broadened to cover jewelry arts, with two-to eight- week programs ranging from jewelry design to wax carving and model making, hand engraving to jewelry making. Subjects were limited to colored stone grading, diamond and gem identification.
Tuition including laboratory fee for a 40-hour program ranges from 13,125 Baht (525 U.S. dollars) to 22,500 Baht (900 U.S. dollars). A 160-hour course on jewelry making adds up to 62,500 Baht (2,500 U.S. dollars). “The school meets international standard,” said Ho, adding that George P.Van Duinwyk, an America jewelry arts professor, is to join AIGS this fall.
Van Duinwyk has won recognition and many awards including a Life Associate Appointment at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in London last year, the National Endowment on the Arts Craftsman’s Fellowship in 1976 and the Designer-craftsmen Award that same year.
The Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences was founded 11 years ago by Ho and an American gemologist-gem dealer Robert Weiser. More than 2,000 people from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America and the Pacific have studied at the institute, returning to their homeland as accredited gemologists.