THE BIRMINGHAM JEWELLERY TRADE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4344, 20 February 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BIRMINGHAM JEWELLERY TRADE.

(From the Practical Mayazinc.) The jewellers' trade of Birmingham is of a singular character. If.an assertion were made that the townsmen cannot produce high-class work, they would demur to its correctness. At any rate, whether they can or cannot, they seldom do. A purchaser would.never think of giving a very high price for an article of Birmingham jewellery ; even if it were first-class he would not believe it, aa he would dread the designation of “ Brummagem” being hurled at it. Yet the International Exhibition of 1872 showed that the workers in that busy town can produce beautiful jewellery if encouraged so to do : excellent in the gems and precious stones, and in the gold and silver accompaniments. Nevertheless, it remains true that Birmingham seldom aims_at these higher flights of art ; it cultivates a larger trade in works of a lower standard. Using the two French terms joaillerie and bijouterie, it may be said that the latter rather than the former represents the average of Birmingham work. The familiar collective name for all the articles produced is trinkets; and the trinket trade of the place is certainly enormous. It comprises small ornamental articles made of gold, silver, aluminium, tortoiseshell, jet, amber, coral, vulcanite, steel, and other materials, combined in almost infinite variety. The designers employed by the .trade are always on the alert in devising or looking out for new patterns for brooches, lockets, necklaces, pendants, finger-rings, earrings, bracelets, armlets, hoir-piiis, buttons, buckles, studs, breast-pins, scarf-pins, and other articles in what may be called personal jewellery; together with an endless variety in pencil-cases, pen-holders, rims for eye-glasses and spectacles, opera-glass mountings, albums and mountings for photographs, cigar-case and fusee-box mountings, tliimbles, pin-oases, needle-oases, desk-mountings, dressing-case and toilet mountings, and the thousand-and-one other articles which are so well known to all of us. It may be asserted with truth that there is not a single home in the metropolis, scarcely a homo in England, entirely without Birmingham trinkets. If the good wife has a penny thimble, it was made at Birmingham. If her grown-up daughter indulges in shilling earrings ; or if her little sister has a half-penny buckle to fasten some part of her dress ; or if Dick is displaying a glittering albert chain in mosaic or aluminium gold ; or if baby has a cheap coral with bells ; or if father has a cheap ever-point in his waistcoat-pocket; or if, the family being placed in mourning, black ornaments in jet, vulcanite, glass, wax, or composition are used, we may be tolerably certain that Birmingham has had something to do with the matter—unless Germany comes in as a successful competitor, which it now often does. We may here remark that Birmingham, in the technical terms of the trade, recognises a distinction |j>gtween gold jewellery, plated jewellery, and gilt toys. The first of these comprises the best work, good gold and silver with precious stones of more or less value. The plated jewellery consists of a plate of precious metal, backed by a thicker layer of some commoner kind. It is inferior to good gold and silver ; but bettor thau electro gilt or silvered. The gilt toys constitute the cheapest kind ; personal and other ornaments in which gilt or colored metals are used, either alone or in combination with imitations of real stones, cameos, mosaics, &c. This constitutes now a vast branch of the Birmingham jewellery trade, and has been greatly augmented - within the last few years by the adoption of the electro process. _ The mode of conducting the trinket trade at v Birmingham, arisihg out of the almost interminable variety in the materials employed and the forms produced, is peculiar. Factors form a medium between the small makers and the buyers. They will give out ingots of silver, or a given weight of sheet gold, to small masters or individual workmen, who work up the precious metal to a defined form ; they give out other materials to other men, who in like manner apply their labor and skill to them. A dozen different men or sets of men may thus be employed at the same time, in a dozen different houses or shops, in making certain parts of the same trinket; but all alike bring or send the result of their handiwork to the warehouse of the factor. Other workmen then put together the pieces thus made. A jewellery or trinket factory, where all the processes are conducted under one roof, is not consistent with the Birmingham system. Almost every small master, almost every workman, confines his attention to some one subdivision of processes, which he carries on at his home dr workshop. The directory of Birmingham trades affords evidence how numerous are these subdivisions in the jewellery or trinket manufacture. .

The use of the word factor suggests a little further explanation of the organisation of the Birmingham trade. The worker, in almost every case, confines himself to one small portion of one branch ; the small master has under him a few men, who among them work up to completeness a limited range of goods ; the manufacturer gives out work to a considerable number of small masters and individual workmen, and puts together the various component elements of au extensive range of articles ; while the factor will buy almost any conceivable kind from manufacturers and small masters, and supply the jewellers’ shops all over England, as well as in many other parts of the world. Mr. Timmins, in his interesting account of the industries of Birmingham and the surrounding district, remarks that “the jewellery trade furnishes a most interesting and important illustration of a peculiarity which places Birmingham in favorable contrast with every other large town and centre of industry in the kingdom, viz., the great number of small but independent manufacturers it supports. There are comparatively few large manufactories, most of the articles for which it is noted being produced in shops where five to fifty hands are employed. Probably nine out of every ten of the master jewellers who are now carrying on business ou their own account were originally workmen. In one instance, no less than twelve independent concerns are now in active operation, each owner employing a number of hands, and each having been apprentice or workman in the service of one particular manufactory, itself established within the last twenty-five years.” The explanation pf this fact is supplied thus ; that a very small capital will suffice to buy the simple working apparatus usually required ; that gold, silver, and other materials can be bought in small quantities ; and that whatever article a man makes, he can generally find a factor ready to purchase it, and perhaps to give him an order to make more of the same kind.

There is one speciality in Birmingham jewellery that deserves a few words of separate notice—the production of gold chains. The authority above quoted says:—“Guard, chains, now an important branch of the trade, were, at the end of the last century, made by one or two manufacturers in a single' pattern, out of brass wire, which was either left in its natural color or was finished by being silvered or gilt. Silver guard chains were made first at Birmingham about the year 1806. Gold chains for a similar purpose have not been made for a longer period than thirty-five years ” (about forty-four years, reckoning back from 1874)/ ‘but are now produced in Birmingham to the value of £250,000 annually. There are forty-seven master manufacturers in this trade, some employing 200 to 300 hands, but the greater part not more than ten to twenty.” The number of gold chain workers in that busy town is set down at TSOO, of whom about onethird are women. Steam power is only used to a limited extent, in bending strips of wire into links; in connection with particular patented inventions, steam-power will, however, fashion a complete chain from strips of metal. Altogether, Birmingham is..credited with working up gold and silver to the value, as mere metal, of one million sterling annually.