The Metal Atelier Story
Metal Atelier exists to create honest rock and roll jewelry with gritty updates to classic ideas inspired by the beauty of the aged, the worn, and the abandoned.
Anna Butwell is the Berlin, Germany based artist behind Metal Atelier. Originally from New York, she took her first metals class somewhere around 2009 on a rickety banquet table in a local community center and never looked back. Over the next eight years, she dove into most every class available in New York, producing jewelry while also maintaining a career in the film industry. In 2017, she decided to take the leap and focus solely on Metal Atelier. Seeking to change both career and perspective, Anna sold most of her worldly possessions, and moved to Berlin, Germany with all of her tools, a few pairs of snakeskin pumps, and not much else.
Anna quickly found a home for herself and Metal Atelier in Volksluxus, a goldsmith collective and art gallery in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, where all collections are produced.
Over the years, she has studied wax with Kate Wolf and Ruta Reifen, engraving with Pierce Healy and Hannelore Lass, stone setting at the New Approach School, and gemmology in Sri Lanka, in addition to many shorter form workshops and master classes.
At Metal Atelier, I believe that something as intimate as jewelry should be made by a face and not a factory.
The jewelry of Metal Atelier explores a perception of beauty that is imperfect with a modern punk rock aesthetic. I believe in the beauty that lies below the surface of what appears to be blemished. All of my collections are left slightly rough, showing the imperfections of the hand of the maker.
Every piece of jewelry begins and ends with my hands. From carving waxes and rolling ingots thru the mill, to the majority of the casting, to sanding and polishing, and finally setting stones and engraving, it is a production line of one. I seek out an analog creative process, preferring to work thru development with a pencil and sketchbook, and then moving directly into 3D forms that will be manipulated and set aside and reworked to rough perfection.
Those who appreciate my jewelry are often seekers of the human touch, looking to work together to take their unrealised ideas and bring them forth together.