When Vacheron Constantin and The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced their new Artisan Residency Programme, it was a cultural handshake between two guardians of heritage. The Geneva-based watchmaker, founded in 1755, and the New York institution, born of 19th-century ideals, share a mission: to protect the beauty of making—its disciplines, materials, and transmission across generations.
This astounding 18-month residency invites artisans from around the world to explore the crossroads of preservation and innovation. The inaugural trio—Aspen Golann, Ibrahim Said, and Joy Harvey—were selected for their mastery of technique and their refusal to let tradition stand still. Each brings a distinctive philosophy to the craft table: furniture, ceramics, and jewelry become portals through which history speaks in a new tongue.
Aspen Golann in Practice
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
North Carolina-based Aspen Golann works where ornament meets commentary. Trained in the 17th- to 19th-century woodworking traditions of early America, she reshapes the forms once used to signal power—high-backed chairs, carved finials, elegant legs—into quietly radical statements. Her pieces might recall colonial silhouettes, yet beneath the surface they question hierarchy, gender, and authorship in the history of decorative arts.
Golann is also a teacher and community builder. She founded The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, a project dedicated to increasing access and equity within the woodworking world, ensuring that handcraft continues as a living, diverse practice. As a faculty member at the Rhode Island School of Design, she channels her belief that teaching is a form of craft itself—shaping not just wood, but the minds that will carry it forward.
For her residency with Vacheron Constant and The Met, Golann moves between New York and Geneva, absorbing the visual lexicon of The Met’s period rooms and the precision of Vacheron Constantin’s Métiers d’Art workshop. The intersection of historical narrative and micro-engineering promises new furniture forms that may blur the boundary between functional object and conceptual sculpture—a meditation on time, lineage, and touch.
Ibrahim Said in Form
Aspen Golann. Courtesy of Vacheron Constantin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Ibrahim Said. Courtesy of Vacheron Constantin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Born in Egypt into a lineage of potters from Fustat—a district celebrated for ceramics since the 7th century—Ibrahim Said learned his craft literally at his father’s wheel. His earliest lessons were of rhythm: the steady pulse of a turning vessel, the breath of the kiln. Today, Said’s practice transforms that familial inheritance into contemporary poetry.
His vessels are marked by paradox: lightness balanced with monumental form, delicate surface carving wrapped around bold, geometric profiles. Each piece pays homage to the vocabulary of ancient Egyptian ceramics while extending it through technical and conceptual experimentation. Said often pushes the structural limits of clay, piercing or folding it in ways that defy expectation, turning the humble pot into an architectural statement.
In Geneva with Vacheron Constantin, the artist encounters another form of precision—the guillochage, enameling, and engraving of fine watchmaking. At The Met, his research may lead him into the museum’s Egyptian and Islamic collections, where pattern and symbol have spoken across millennia. His resulting work will likely echo that dialogue: craft as continuity, form as cultural bridge, the vessel as both relic and revelation.
Joy Harvey in Time
Joy Harvey. Courtesy of Vacheron Constantin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Photography by Brett Beyer. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
If Golann and Said translate tradition through form, Joy Harvey redefines it through philosophy. Trained initially in pure chemistry, the Italian-based jeweler approaches metal as matter alive with transformation. Her art merges the disciplines of Florentine goldsmithing and Armenian techniques, balancing old-world intricacy with contemporary abstraction.
Harvey’s jewels often appear aged or evolving—surfaces burnished by time, asymmetries that recall organic growth. For her, beauty is never static; it arises from imperfection, from the passage between states. That belief extends to her exploration of emotion and aging, ideas she frames not as decline but as metamorphosis.
During the residency, Harvey traces correspondences between her alchemical instincts and the time-based artistry of horology. At Vacheron Constantin’s ateliers, where artisans hand-engrave minuscule details visible only under magnification, she will find a kindred devotion to patience. At The Met, her encounters with jewelry spanning civilizations—from Etruscan gold to Renaissance enamel—will inform pieces that embody the continuity of human adornment: ornament as both science and soul.
A Living Legacy of Savoir-Faire
Courtesy of Vacheron Constantin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Artisan Residency Programme unfolds in three phases: research, creation, and public engagement. After their months of study in New York and Geneva, each artisan will propose and realize an original work blending innovation with tradition. Their final presentation, scheduled for October 2026 at The Met, will open their process to the public through exhibitions and workshops—a chance for audiences to witness how old crafts can breathe anew.
For both institutions, the residency extends a long-standing ethos. The Met, founded in 1870 to bring art and education to the American people, continues to serve as a platform where past and present converse. Vacheron Constantin, celebrating its 270th anniversary, has spent nearly three centuries safeguarding mechanical and decorative mastery—from miniature enamel painting to gem-setting and engraving. Its Les Cabinotiers workshop already collaborates with collectors to reproduce museum masterpieces on watch dials through the Masterpiece on Your Wrist initiative. The residency now opens that spirit of dialogue to independent artisans, reaffirming that mentorship and transmission are the beating heart of craft.
Manufacture Vacheron Constantin. Courtesy of Vacheron Constantin. Photography by Maud Guye-Vuillegrave.
At its core, the partnership reflects François Constantin’s 1819 motto: “Do better if possible, and that is always possible.” It is a statement equally suited to a horologist calibrating a movement or an artist carving a chair leg. Both acts require humility before time and mastery, and both insist that progress depends on care.
In an age defined by speed, the Vacheron Constantin and The Met residency stands as an antidote: a slow revolution in making. By inviting Golann, Said, and Harvey to draw from centuries of artistry while speaking to the present, the program celebrates the artisan as a living bridge between heritage and horizon. Their work reminds us that savoir-faire is not a static archive but a pulse—a measure of time as intimate as a heartbeat, as enduring as the crafts that survive it.
