5/8/06 | Halstead Bead Grant
I found about this grant from Halstead through Tammy’s About.com Jewelry Making site. I had to admit I was a bit skeptical at first. Can you really get a grant like this to make jewelry? It turns out you can, and the prize they’re offering for the winner of the contest is quite substantial: $5000 cash business grant, a $1000 gift cert for Halstead, and a profile in their upcoming 2007 Metals Catalog.
The deadline is actually coming up pretty soon: June 15, with winners to be announced some time in July. They have full information about how to submit your pieces and other information on their site.
The purpose of the contest is to highlight the growing difficulty of so called “Bridge Jewelry design” in the United States due to competition from both designers overseas and mass-produced stuff. (I had no idea what this term “Bridge Jewelry” meant, but apparently is the catch-all designation for jewelry that “bridges the gap” between precious metal jewelry and plain old costume jewelry. In other words, this is probably most of the stuff that any serious home jewelry designer is making!)
For full information and the mailing address to send submissions, please visit the Halstead Bead site.
June 26th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Surprisingly, they received over 100 applications. I would have thought with $5000 in cash alone for a business there would have been many more applications.