Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann has been making a living as a contemporary American metalsmith and jewelry designer for 48 years, but really learned jewelry making 7 years before becoming a professional in a pivotal high school jewelry semester. Subsequently he became an apprentice with two different professional silversmiths in his hometown of Allentown PA. During the summer of 1968 he opened his first shop in East Stroudsburg in the Pocono Mountains and then a year later opened Solar Wind Silversmiths in Stone Harbor NJ, but he counts the start of his professional career as of his graduation from college in 1970. Since then he has employed over 600 people, 450 of whom were trained to make jewelry in his burgeoning business.  Thirty of them are now competing professionals themselves. Additionally he has been teaching his Design for Survival™ – Entrepreneurial Thinking and Tactics for Artists workshops, since its invention for a workshop at Penland School for Craft in North Carolina in 1989, and somewhere in the world every year since, in both long and short forms.  He gave this workshop in Hobart, Tasmania in 2015 and again, in 2017 at Penland. Many of the participants in these workshops have then launched their own professional practices based on the experience they had with Tom.