This edited volume looks at the midland metal trades and documents their intertwining histories and the correlations between artisans from different occupations who relied on the same tools, skills and materials and who often worked in near proximity to one another. It considers how practices were shared across the many and various trades and the extent to which the metal trades not only borrowed from each other but also contributed to their mutual development to create new processes, products and methods of production.
Chapters include
Peter King: The Iron Industry in the West Midlands, 1550–1815
Philip Attwood: Birmingham as a centre of production for medals, tokens and coins from the 1780s to the present
John Grayson: The Eighteenth-Century English Enamel Trade: a midland survey and technical treatise
Rebecca Struthers: Making Time in the Midlands: 1430–1970
Caroline Archer-Parré: Letters of lead: the midland printing trade, 1480–1880
Rosie Smith: The Iron Age of Home Furnishings: the Coalbrookdale Company in the context of Victorian interior design
Ann-Marie Carey: The engravers craft: Robert Campell-Legg master engraver 1946-present
David Hawkins: Artist Blacksmithing in the Midlands: influences and coincidences