Manuel Vilhena, 1967 – Lisbon, Portugal

Started making Jewellery in his teens learning from master craftsmen in Brazil and Italy. He completed his training as a classical goldsmith in 1989 in Lisbon, Portugal. Curious about Contemporary Jewellery, he made his way to Cologne, Germany, to study with Prof. Peter Skubic and later enrolled at the Royal College of Art, London, under Prof. David Watkins, where he completed his Masters’ degree in 1998.

In 1999 he founded Postcon to promote and explore ‘Post-Contemporary Jewellery’ and other far-fetched ideas. Some are contained in Manuel’s book “Do you speak Jewellery?©” (1998), a seminal text for Contemporary Jewellery theory, revisited in 2015 in the follow-up “DYSJ 2”. In 2018 he completed a Masters in Education at Lisbon Univeristy and at present he runs a programme for Art Teacher Training and other educational projects.

He has taught extensively at jewellery related institutions around the world, including the Royal College of Art, Hiko Mizuno Jewellery College, Tokyo; Silpakorn University, Bangkok; ARCO school, Lisbon, the Shenkar College in Tel-Aviv and the Alchimia School, Florence,where he was senior lecturer for six years. He was workshop leader at the Salzburg Summer Academy for two years and held a Professorship at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts for four years. He is an entertaining lecturer and most of what he says is true.

His artwork has been shown in several countries and some examples can be seen in several books on Contemporary Jewellery. The work is also present in some public and private collections, including that of the Danner Rotunde, Munich and that of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

He practises worldwide aiming at developing the creative and expressive potential of people through the arts.
He lives between the mountains of central Europe and sunny Portugal with occasional stops for bird-watching here and there.