In a quiet workroom near New York City’s Diamond District, artisans at William Goldberg cut and polish rough diamonds into sparkling jewels. There, 2025 Jewelry Design grad Matthew Denatale completed a three-week apprenticeship in June with master cutter Willie Lopez, studying the art and craft of diamond cutting.
Under Lopez’s tutelage, Denatale worked on two stones that were too flawed to be of great value. They created gorgeous, glinting gems with an Ashoka cut, an elongated shape originally created by an Ancient Indian jeweler and reinvented in the modern era by luxury diamantaire William Goldberg. Denatale got to keep the stones he worked on to incorporate into his jewelry designs.
“As a jewelry designer, I thought it was important to understand how the raw material is turned into the finished product,” Denatale says. “Seeing how a stone came to life as you cut it was really cool.”
The Goldberg family came up the idea for the apprenticeship, will which run two to three times per year.
“We’ve been manufacturing in New York on site for 50-plus years,” says Benjamin Goldberg, a third-generation member of this family business. “The majority of our diamond cutters are in their 60s or older. My dad [Saul Goldberg] said, ‘Let’s get some young blood in here and see if anybody would be interested in this work.’”
Adjunct faculty member Michael Coan brought his Jewelry Design class to William Goldberg’s headquarters, and a handful of students applied for the internship.
“This remarkable opportunity introduces our students to a very important, and extremely difficult field to enter,” says Kim Nelson, assistant chair of Jewelry Design.
Coan says that the apprenticeship teaches students “in three weeks how to release the inherent beauty, sparkle, and flash that only a diamond can produce.”