Studio: international art (34.1905)

The Birmingham School for Jewellers

mew's the Great, as is only befitting, there are was made with the Municipal School of Art,

many timber-built houses of great age, and in whereby special accommodation was provided at

Cloth Fair one can see enough of them grouped one of the existing branch schools to enable the

together to get an idea of a street in past Jewellers' to fit out properly organised workrooms,

centuries, as well as a notion of the courts to be under their supreme control, in which the trade

and alleys of the past. Near here, too, is students might be afforded full technical training

to be found in the Charterhouse material of in their craft. This technical course was, however,

extraordinary interest, as also in the old build- to run concurrently with the regular art classes

ings clustered round the Tower; and when already in existence there, which remained under

mediaeval London is exhausted, there remain the the control of the Municipal Art Committee,

fine late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Further than that, admittance to the technical

houses, of which there are still many survivals; course was to a considerable extent dependent upon

such, for instance, as those in Great Ormond the attendance and progress of the students in the

Street, Bedford Row, Buckingham Street, Hanover art-classes, and therefore largely under the control

Square, etc. of the head art-master.

T. R. Way. Naturally the success of this scheme depended
upon the harmonious blending of the two separate
controlling interests ; and, in spite of their efforts

THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL to make it successful, both parties to the scheme

FOR JEWELLERS AND SILVER- felt that the system was not satisfactory, chiefly

SMITHS. BYA.S.WAINWRIGHT. because of the widely divergent ends, in the way
ot examinations principally, for which each section

The Birmingham Jewellers' Association was was working,

founded in 1887, and from its commencement one The technical training became too technical,

of its chief objects was the better artistic training and aimed at success in the examinations con-

of the young people engaged in the jewellery trade, ducted by the City and Guilds of London

As a result of the endeavours of two or three influen- Institute, which demanded purely technical

tial members of the committee an arrangement knowledge, including alloys of metals, with assay

the birmingham school for jewellers and silversmiths ! the big class-room

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