Along with the exciting news surrounding the winners of the third St. Hope travel scholarship, we also had the pleasure this week to receive an update from Elia Rizzo, our second Florence Apprenticeship winner (given in conjunction with the Le Arti Orafe school of Florence). Elia has been hard at work this spring mastering the intricate etching technique and training under Marco Baroni, at his eponymous jewelery studio in the Oltrarno.

Despite having just started studying and practicing the technique of etching, Elia describes his progress as, “very good – without boasting – but one can view my panels, which speak for themselves!” He goes on to say that “etching is a fascinating art form, that requires long periods of practice and lots of patience, but one that is very satisfying, especially if trained under a master etcher, of whom I have the great fortune of studying under.” He also wanted to let the Context community know, “I get and enormous amount of satisfaction from attending my etching course and I continue to consider myself extremely lucky and indebted to Context, which has given me the chance to start this interesting path that is enriching my technical and artistic practice. I also consider it a personal life experience that is very precious.”