 |
|
|
 | | |  |
Birmingham's hidden jewel |
 |
The larger factories did not arrive in the Jewellery Quarter until after the 1830s, when George Elkington launched the new industry of electroplating from his works in Newhall Street, and Joseph Gillott in Graham Street cornered the mass market for steel pens. Gillott’s workers - mostly women - made no less than 30,000 pen nibs each day. Both men relied on a resident workforce that was good with their hands.
Vyse Street in the heart of Birmingham's jewellery quarter
© Birmingham Library |
In the Jewellery Quarter one trade in metal-working effortlessly dovetailed into another. Such expansion and diversification carried on into the 20th Century. In 1928 Thomas Fattorini Ltd brought its factory down from Yorkshire and set up in Frederick Street. The firm still makes some of the country’s most prized possessions: MBE and OBE medals and Lonsdale belts.
One of the great joys of a visit to the Jewellery Quarter is that you can combine a spot of window shopping with a privileged insight into how a Victorian industry moved and expanded. St Paul’s Square came first, offering impressive two and three storey houses for an upwardly mobile clientele.
Jewellery design is fine work
© Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery |
Further north and west came the houses and workshops for the smaller masters, where the garden at the rear could easily be filled with additional workshop space. Manufacture might begin with the family, but could take in a few extra workers too, who lived nearby in the back-to-backs. Security and a shared interest kept the industry neatly tied together.
It was here that Birmingham’s celebrated small traders transformed the world’s raw materials - mother-of-pearl and ivory, or the gold from the new mines in California and Australia - into products that the rest of the world wanted. The artisans themselves could be well-traveled too.
Jews from Russia and Central Europe took advantage of house building around Vyse Street to be close to where the action was, and at the same time expanded the Quarter’s trade into watch and chain making. Their move into the Quarter can be paralleled by the appearance of manufacturers from the Indian sub-continent today, making jewellery for the Pakistani and Indian communities.
All of which makes the Jewellery Quarter one of Birmingham’s richest areas, whether you’re enjoying the architecture or the shop windows.
Words: Chris Upton
Your comments
| |
 Print this page |
|
Archive
Look back into the past using the Legacies' archives. Find nearly 200 tales from around the country in our collection.
Read more > |
| | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| The 麻豆官网首页入口 is not responsible for the content of external Web sites. |
| | | |
| | |
| |
|
