International studio (25.1905)

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mew's the Great, as is only befitting, there are
many timber-built houses of great age, and in
Cloth Fair one can see enough of them grouped
together to get an idea of a street in past
centuries, as well as a notion of the courts
and alleys of the past. Near here, too, is
to be found in the Charterhouse material of
extraordinary interest, as also in the old build-
ings clustered round the Tower; and when
mediaeval London is exhausted, there remain the
line late seventeenth and early eighteenth century
houses, of which there are still many survivals;
such, for instance, as those in Great Ormond
Street, Bedford Row, Buckingham Street, Hanover
Square, etc.
T. R. WAY.
^yiHE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL
jj FOR JEWELLERS AND SILVER-
g SMITHS. BYA.S.WAINWRIGHT.
THE Birmingham Jewellers' Association was
founded in 1887, and from its commencement one
of its chief objects was the better artistic training
of the young people engaged in the jewellery trade.
As a result of the endeavours of two or three influen-
tial members of the committee an arrangement

was made with the Municipal School of Art,
whereby special accommodation was provided at
one of the existing branch schools to enable the
Jewellers' to fit out properly organised workrooms,
to be under their supreme control, in which the trade
students might be afforded full technical training
in their craft. This technical course was, however,
to run concurrently with the regular art classes
already in existence there, which remained under
the control of the Municipal Art Committee.
Further than that, admittance to the technical
course was to a considerable extent dependent upon
the attendance and progress of the students in the
art-classes, and therefore largely under the control
of the head art-master.
Naturally the success of this scheme depended
upon the harmonious blending of the two separate
controlling interests ; and, in spite of their efforts
to make it successful, both parties to the scheme
felt that the system was not satisfactory, chiefly
because of the widely divergent ends, in the way
of examinations principally, for which each section
was working.
The technical training became too technical,
and aimed at success in the examinations con-
ducted by the City and Guilds of London
Institute, which demanded purely technical
knowledge, including alloys of metals, with assay


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THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL FOR JEWELLERS AND SILVERSMITHS : THE BIG CLASS-ROOM