The Jewellery Quarter
Our studio has found its home in the heart of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. A bustling hub for jewellery manufacture in the UK the Jewellery Quarter is brimming with jewellery shops, casting houses, stone setters and hundreds of designers, makers and tradespeople working from Aladdin’s caves of hidden workshops.
I’ve been living in Birmingham since 2015 when I moved up here for a job as a CAD Designer for one of the UK’s biggest manufacturers of diamond jewellery. I’d been moving around the country to learn more about the trade and have found myself a real home.
The Quarter has such an important heritage of manufacture in the Midlands. At it’s peak in the early 1900’s the Jewellery Quarter employed over 30,000 people in varying facets of jewellery and silverware production. Since then the Jewellery Quarter has changed a lot. With competition from foreign manufacture the density of production has decreased but 40% of British jewellery is still made in Birmingham!
The Jewellery Quarter is currently seeing intensive re-development with lots of beautiful, derelict Victorian buildings seeing new life as homes and workspaces. There’s always something happening here with a huge choice of jewellery shops, museums, wonderful pubs and great places to eat, it really is a great place to visit.
I’m hugely proud to be part of the creative community of makers based in this small square mile, it really does feel like it’s own little village.