Why is Birmingham central to R.W. Wingate Ltd jewellery history?

Birmingham is central to R.W. Wingate Ltd jewellery history since the firm is recorded at Hockley Centre and many surviving pieces carry the Birmingham Assay Office anchor. The city had been a major British centre for jewellery and precious-metal manufacture long before Wingate’s known 1970s and 1980s pieces were made.

The Birmingham Assay Office was founded in 1773, and its anchor became the city’s assay symbol. Birmingham gained authority to hallmark gold in 1824. Local Jewellery Quarter records state that the Hockley Centre opened in 1971. They place the Quarter’s employment peak around 1913, when an estimated 70,000 people worked in Birmingham’s jewellery and small-metalware trades. Those figures give useful scale to the industrial setting inherited by later firms such as Wingate.