Articles
Building this catalogue means reading a great deal of the public record, and some of what falls out of it is worth writing up on its own. These are measurements rather than opinions: each one states its method, its source and what it does not show.
For a maker's own account of their history, the stories are the place. Those are quoted, not written by us.
Every protected place name in Britain is something you eat
The UK statutory register holds 99 protected geographical names and not one is a manufactured good. So Made in Sheffield is a £200 licence, and Harris Tweed needed an Act of Parliament.
Sheffield faked London's mark for a century, then invented "Made in"
Sheffield cutlers stamped LONDON on their knives for sixty years. When Solingen returned the favour with CHIFFILD, they went to Parliament, and the phrase "Made in" was the result.
One in six of Britain's cutlery companies is still in Sheffield
We counted every company filing a manufacturing trade code at Companies House. Sheffield holds 0.89% of them, and 16% of the cutlery trade.
The register still knows where things were made
We measured every town's trade against its own share of British manufacturing. Kidderminster holds carpets at 43 times its baseline, Stoke ceramics at 23, Sheffield cutlery at 18.