It is from Complete Adventurer in the PrC section. Idk what feats artificers get. I'd guess they get quite a few. I as a DM would be willing to refluff it, though that doesn't matter much here.
EDIT-They get all the core item creation feats. They also get 5 bonus feats. These can be used on Metamagic or a custom list of 5 in the class entry. There are no item creation feats on that list. Maester would allow him to get some other item creation feats from out of core, but it wouldn't really help him anyway. Also, you said it was a core game so there wouldn't be any other item creation feats for him to take. Looking at artfiicer I can't see any reason why would you would not advance in the class all the way. Straight artificer would be better than going into Maester. Now if it were gestalt, he could do maester and something else on the other side. That would be cool and also probably game breaking depending on what else you put on 2nd. side.