How Hatton Garden Trains the Next Generation of Jewellers

Behind the showrooms of Hatton Garden lies a quieter story, how the trade trains the goldsmiths, setters and designers who keep it alive. One of the most influential efforts to secure that future began with Jason Holt, whose family gemstone business grew into a wider group and gave rise to a dedicated jewellery academy. That academy, later known as the British Academy of Jewellery, helped tackle a skills shortage that once threatened the craft. This is the story of how jewellery training in Hatton Garden evolved, why apprenticeships matter, and how the quarter continues to pass its skills to the next generation in London's EC1N diamond district.

How a Gemstone Business Became a Training Force

Jason Holt grew his family firm from a specialist gemstone supplier into a group of related companies, spanning gemstones, jewellery innovation and the technology studio Holition. Among these ventures, it was the academy that aimed squarely at the future of the trade.

Set up as a not-for-profit, the academy offered training and apprenticeships to hundreds of jewellery designers, makers and businesses across several London sites. Its purpose was simple, to grow the pool of skilled people the industry needed to survive.

That focus on jewellery design and manufacture skills addressed a real gap, since craftsmanship cannot be imported overnight and takes years of hands-on learning to develop.

Why Training the Competition Made Sense

When Holt joined the family business, he saw an industry weakened by a shortage of skills that few others seemed willing to fix. Many in the trade were sceptical, asking why anyone would train people who might go on to work for rivals.

His answer reframed the question. By growing the industry as a whole, every serious business would have a place within a larger, healthier trade, rather than competing over a shrinking pool of talent. Training the next generation was, in his view, the only way to avoid collective decline.

That long view proved influential, and the model of structured apprenticeships has since shaped how the wider craft thinks about its future.

Fun fact: A traditional goldsmithing apprenticeship can take several years to complete, with skills such as hand engraving and stone setting passed directly from master to apprentice at the bench.

Why Apprenticeships Matter to the Craft

Fine jewellery depends on skills that no machine fully replaces, from hand-finishing and stone-setting to the eye a master develops over decades. Passing those skills on before senior craftspeople retire is essential if the trade is to keep its standards.

Apprenticeships give young makers a route into the profession that classroom study alone cannot, combining real workshop experience with formal training. For a quarter built on bespoke jewellery, that continuity of skill is the foundation of everything it sells.

Modern training also embraces new tools, including CAD jewellery design, so the next generation pairs traditional handwork with the technology that now shapes much of the trade.

Keeping British Jewellery Craft Thriving

The ambition behind the academy was to give the greatest living master craftspeople a way to pass on their skills before they retire, keeping British craft and design strong for the future. The more businesses that take on apprentices and share their skills needs, the better the chance of rejuvenating the industry.

Today's makers must also reach buyers far beyond the quarter, which means a strong online presence sits alongside workshop skill. Professional web design services help Hatton Garden's craftspeople present their work to a global audience and turn heritage skills into modern sales.

The lesson endures. By investing in people and presence together, the jewellers of Hatton Garden continue to protect a craft that has defined the quarter for well over a century, and to carry it confidently into the years ahead.