If you want to make pretty things with blunt instruments, Jim Robson is your go-to guy

Jim Robson, the master ­jeweler who helped found Nunavut Arctic College's ­jewelry-making program in the late 1970s, returned to Iqaluit in November to teach the craft to a new generation of students.

Robson, who now lives on Nova Scotia's South Shore, was working in his home province of Saskatchewan during the summer of 1976, planning to move to Germany that fall to continue his art studies. Instead, he got an offer from the then-government of the Northwest Territories to come to Iqaluit to start a jewelry-making program as an economic development initiative.

Then a proverbial starving art student, Robson's curiosity got the best of him.

"The idea of coming to the Arctic was really exciting and after post-secondary education, the idea of making some money was also exciting," Robson said during an interview, Thursday, Nov. 29, as the saws and hammers of jewelry students banged away down the hall.

Robson was in Iqaluit for two weeks last month to teach students at NAC's jewelry program how to create moulds to put in a hydraulic press and punch shapes out of thin pieces of metal. It's a low-tech and simple way to cut out a shape repeatedly, but cutting the moulds out of blocks of urethane takes some getting used to.

"There were a lot of broken saw blades and a lot of muttering under the breath (at first)," Robson said.

Beata Hejnowicz, NAC's senior instructor of fine arts and crafts programs, said she hopes Robson's instruction means the underused hydraulic press will see more action.

Robson also taught Hejnowicz at art school in Toronto, and she credits him with inspiring her to come North. "He's a natural teacher," she said.

Today, Robson is also an established craftsman, the recipient of numerous awards and commissions whose work is included in a collection of contemporary Canadian jewelry at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.

Though he played a role in the birth of artistic jewelry making in the Eastern Arctic, Robson shied away from commenting on the state of Inuit art today. Although he ran an Inuit art gallery in Calgary for five years after he returned south, he moved on to a teaching job in Toronto in 1986, and Robson said he lost contact with Inuit art.

"Any of my observations would be 20 years old and not valid," he said, adding some of the work he's seen during this trip North is "just spectacular."

But he's thoroughly impressed with what's become of NAC's fine arts and crafts program. "What a great operation," he said.

He also spent much of his time in Iqaluit marveling at the massive growth and myriad changes the city has undergone since his time here in the 1970s. Both the building that housed the original jewelry programs and the old army barrack in which he used to live are long gone. The number of cars now on the streets is "staggering."