Understanding the techniques and methods of mass production

If you are to really understand any made object you need to know how it was made. If you don’t know this then you are left puzzled as to why it has taken the shape it has.
When ‘one off’ objects are made they are usually produced to commission to fulfil a very specific need. If there is a small specialist market for a particular product then some of the cheaper types of mass production techniques may be utilised on a small scale. In both these cases the designer will also usually be the craftsman who makes the product, and the product will be quite expensive because of the amount of hand labour which goes into making it. It is also possible to produce very intricate work of a type which can not be reproduced by machinery, but obviously work of this type is only available to people with lots of money for luxuries.
 
To meet the needs of a large market large companies using mass production techniques are required. And large companies lose the flexibility of the designer/craftsman set up.

This point can not be stressed too strongly. Mass production is by its nature inflexible, the construction of the machinery which allows mass production is expensive and time consuming and huge numbers of pieces have to be made and sold in order for mass production to be cost effective.

The steps involved in mass producing a design.

Mass production is undertaken for two main reasons, firstly to produce a large number of identical products to satisfy a demand and secondly to produce these objects as cheaply as possible to maximise the number of people who can afford them while also maximising profit.

When designing anything the designer has to be aware of and take into account the way it will be made. After it has been designed it has to be constructed and in mass production the next stage is usually undertaken by a specialist, or a team of specialists, who make the prototypes which will be used to make the tools which allow objects to be mass produced.
Once the prototypes have passed many checks to ensure they are correct the investment in the necessary tools is undertaken, these tools are relatively expensive to produce but will allow enormous volumes of precision work to be undertaken by unskilled or semi-skilled labour.

As can be seen to initial stages are the costly ones, the designer and the specialist team are very skilled labour and the ‘tooling up’ is not something to be repeated unless absolutely necessary. Understanding this point will help you understand many of the ‘peculiarities’ we come across in vintage costume jewellery.

The steps involved in mass producing costume jewellery.

Techniques of mass production were/are always evolving but certain aspects remained, and remain, more or less the same.
One of these aspects is the need for findings. Findings are all the little things which are needed to produce a final product, like clasps for necklaces and bracelets, or earring clips or screws, or standardised pieces of metal for joining sections together, or brooch mechanisms.
Another aspect is the use of moulds to make many identical pieces out of thick metal or the use of stamping to do the same out of thin metal.

In many cases these