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Golden Opportunities: Jewelry Making in Birmingham between Mass Production and Specialty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Francesca Carnevali
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Abstract

Narratives of flexible specialization as an alternative to mass production are largely absent from the industrial history of twentieth-century Britain. In this article, I challenge the notion that we should relegate small firms and industrial districts to a marginal place in the historiography of this period. Drawing from a range of sources, I explore the history of Birmingham's jewelry makers to show how they adapted the traditional productive system of the district to respond in a dynamic way to the challenges of rapid product market differentiation. As jewelry increasingly became a commodity for mass consumption, the firms in the Birmingham district used a combination of specialty and mass production as a strategy to both satisfy and create demand.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , 01 June 2003 , pp. 272 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2003. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

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