DESIGNERS, CRAFTSMEN, SILVER MANUFACTURERS AND ENGRAVERS
1992. Her work is in the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum. In 2002 she changed her surname to Freeman, but her maker’s mark remains PJH. She currently works and teaches in the Cotswolds. HARDING, Geoffrey Norman was a physicist, silversmith and accomplished amateur musician. He died in 2011 at the age of 91. HARDING, Neil Born in 1937, he studied at the Birmingham School of Jewellery and Silversmithing, Birmingham College of Art from 1954-7 and at the Norwich College of Art from 1958-9. This was followed by study at the Royal College of Art from 195962. Upon graduating, the College awarded him a travelling scholarship. In 1965 he won the Topham Trophy competition. He was Head of Jewellery and Silversmithing at Leicester Polytechnic and in the late 1960s and early 1970s a consultant designer to Arthur Price. He established a studio and workshop in Morcott, Rutland. HARRINGTON, Bernard He was Head of the Department of Silversmithing and Jewellery at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee during the period 1943-1974. He designed and made silver. HARRISON, Paul Born in 1946 he studied at West Sussex College of Art and Design and the Birmingham School of Jewellery and Silversmithing, Birmingham College of Art. Upon completion of the Birmingham course the Goldsmiths’ Company awarded him a travelling scholarship and he visited Iceland and Copenhagen. He was offered the possibility of working with Louis Osman, but as he was getting married, decided that combining teaching with silversmithing would be the steadier option. In 1968 he became an arts and crafts teacher at a secondary school in Deal. He established a workshop at his home. His work is in collections at Eton College as well as Aston and Cambridge Universities. In 1976 he established his home and workshop in an old windmill at Deal. HAWKSLEY, Anthony Paton Born in 1921, he trained at the Maidstone School of Art from 1938-40 and after the war from 1946-8. He studied at the Royal College of Art from 1948-51. He established a workshop at his Maidstone home in 1952 but by the mid-1950s he had moved to north Oxfordshire where he combined designing and making silver with teaching. In the late 1960s he was exhibiting at the newly established Oxford Gallery and he also formed a special relationship with Payne of Oxford who commissioned him to make a collection of acid-etched silver for Wolfson College, Oxford, as well as commemorative pieces for the 1977 Silver Jubilee. He lived in Cornwall from 1974-9, Devon from 1979-83 and in Suffolk from 1983. An unusual aspect of his works were ‘silverscapes’ where he created three-dimensional enamel and silver scenes for jewellery and lids of boxes. He died in 1991. See pp.246-51. THE HERITAGE COLLECTION Michael Cansdale’s successful mail-order company based in Bristol (but later with offices in Cape Town, London, New York and Sydney). It sold limited editions by Stuart Devlin, Anthony Elson, Christopher Lawrence and others. HILL, Atholl Nairn Born in 1935, he studied industrial design and silversmithing at Glasgow School of Art. Early in his career
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he received a number of important commissions from the Goldsmiths’ Company. His commissions include a ciborium for Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford; a processional cross for the Royal Chapel at the Tower of London and bowls for Loughborough University and the University of York. He also taught design and was a designer for British Rail. HILL, Reginald Henry Born in 1914, he undertook a silversmithing apprenticeship upon leaving school. He later studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (Central School). The Goldsmiths’ Company purchased a cigarette box he made there in 1936. After his studies he did freelance work, designing the Ascot Gold Cup in 1939. After the war he taught design at the Central School, but continued freelance designing. His output was prolific and he was certainly the leading designer of the 1940s, 1950s and to an extent the very early 1960s. He died in 1975 having made a contribution to the transition from traditional to modern silver. See pp.252-7. HIMSWORTH, Joyce Rosemary was born in Sheffield in 1905. From an early age, she worked with her silversmith father, Joseph Beeston Himsworth at B Worth & Sons, making small spoons and items of jewellery. She also designed for the company. She went on to study at Sheffield School of Art. In 1925 she and her father registered their joint mark. She established her own workshop in Sheffield. In the early 1930s she studied under HG Murphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and registered her own mark in both London and Sheffield. She was not a prolific maker and mostly worked to commission. Examples of her work are a pair of lily vases and two chalices for Westminster Cathedral and a silver and gold Peace Cup made for the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition. She took part in many of the exhibitions of the Goldsmiths’ Company both at home and abroad and also taught at art colleges in Rotherham and Chesterfield. She retired in the 1960s. There was an exhibition of her work at the Sheffield City Museum in 1978. She died in 1990. HOAD, Mary Born in 1925 she studied at Brighton College of Art then with Dunstan Pruden. She worked as a designer and parttime silversmith from her workshop in Hove. All her silver was handmade and often incorporated ivory, agate or wood and featured mice, cats or owls. HODGSON, Gordon Born in 1945, he studied at Carlisle College of Art from 1962-3 and then at the Sheffield College of Art from 1963-6. He concluded his studies at the Royal College of Art. In 1969 he established a workshop in London’s Edgware Road and worked freelance, winning a Design Award the same year. HOLDEN, Geoffrey His father was HH Holden, principal of the Birmingham Municipal School of Art from 1928-46. Holden junior trained at Birmingham and the Royal College of Art. He made a number of masterpieces and became a silver instructor at Tunbridge Wells Art School and Brighton College of Art. He designed a handbag mirror, made by Padgett and Braham that was given to ladies at a party at Goldsmiths’ Hall to mark the Coronation in 1953. In 1954 London Studio published his book The Craft of the Silversmith.
DESIGNERS, CRAFTSMEN, SILVER MANUFACTURERS AND ENGRAVERS
HOLLIDAY, Charles trained at Sheffield College of Art and joined James Dixon and Sons of Sheffield in 1927. He remained with them for all of his working life. He was the most successful designer they had, designing the Blue Riband Trophy at over 600 ounces in 1932, the American Masters Golf Trophy in the 1950s at a similar weight and 16 Grand National trophies from 1957. The latter were put to tender by Boodle and Dunthorne of Liverpool and there was only one year that he did not win the commission. Many of these were made by Dixon’s own silversmith, Trevor Collins. In 1951 he designed a three-piece tea service for the British Industries Fair at Wembley. The Queen liked it so much that she bought one. Harrod’s commissioned a centrepiece by him for the silver jubilee in 1977. Although the company generally made traditional wares, Holiday kept in touch with contemporary design and put this to good use for the commissioned pieces.
sole remaining employee. In 1953 Bernard moved the business to Solihull where his sons John and Paul gradually took over until he retired in 1963. He died in 1987.
HOPE, Adrian Kruse Anthony Born in 1953, he undertook his art foundation course at Brighton College of Art from 1970-1 and then studied silversmithing at Sheffield College of Art from 19714 and at Edinburgh College of Art from 1975-6. Afterwards he briefly worked for David Mellor before he and his wife Linda Lewin (a jeweller) moved to the Gold and Silver Studio in Bath. The couple established a workshop in Edinburgh in 1979 where he made small silver pieces. In the 1980s he began fabricating larger pieces. By the mid-1980s he was experimenting with paper embossing the surface of silver. In 1994 they moved to Stobo in Peebleshire. In the 1990s he started raising silver by a technique learnt from Mogens Bjørn-Andersen, a Danish smith in his eighties. Teapots became a speciality. In the second half of the first decade of the 21st century he added Snowbowls to his range. These have no embellishment at all. See pp.258-65.
JOHNS, Peter Born in 1944, he undertook a pre-apprenticeship course at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts and subsequently served his apprenticeship with Blunt and Wray. His masterpiece with which he secured his Freedom of the Goldsmiths’ Company was a processional cross for Canterbury Cathedral. He was subsequently employed as a craftsman in the workshop of Stuart Devlin. A part-time lecturer, he also served as a technical tutor at Middlesex University. He later worked at the Art and Design Institute, School of Art and Design at the University. In 1990 he began research on the effects of germanium additions to silver and discovered inter alia that the result was silver with a high level of tarnish resistance. Using the alloy for sterling silver – 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper and some metalloid germanium – it was called Argentium Sterling Silver. He worked closely with Richard Fox in using the new alloy as a replacement for sterling silver, but the trade has not generally favoured it.
HOUSE of LAWRIAN This was a venture by Christopher Lawrence with his elder brother during the second half of the 1970s. The company was a retailer and wholesaler of silver and provided design services. At the peak, Christopher had a workforce of about 20 individuals. He supplied the creative input while his brother managed the business – unfortunately not very well. Christopher picked up the pieces. So that he could keep as many of his team together as possible, he took the lease of a workshop at Southend-on-Sea and rented space to those craftsmen who wished to continue with him. No longer employees, they became selfemployed, working for Christopher as sub-contractors. INSTONE, Bernard Born in 1891 in Birmingham. Aged 12 he attended the Birmingham School of Jewellery and Silversmithing. Following an invitation by the German Court goldsmith Emil Lettre, Bernard went to Berlin to study. Back in the UK, he worked with John Paul Cooper at his Westerham studio until he was called up for the First World War. In 1919 he established the Langstone silver works in Digbeth, Birmingham, with his brother Reginald. He was selling to a broad range of clients including Sibyl Dunlop who he visited every Friday at her shop in London’s Kensington, supplying her with silver jewellery she had designed. In the 1940s Liberty eventually became a customer after 25 years of his trying to sell to them. Around this time he opened a shop in Salcombe, Devon that sold a less expensive range of his jewellery as well as paintings. In 1944 his brother Reginald left. Because of the war, he was the
IVANOVIC, Kay Born in the USA during 1943, she studied illustration at Moore College of Art, Philadelphia. In the UK she undertook a part time diploma course in silver at the Sir John Cass College and received a distinction. She works from her London home mainly on private commissions. Much of her work is either organic or etched. Her work is included in the Silver Trust (which owns the silver used at 10 Downing Street), the Millenium Canteen, the Goldmiths’ Company, the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Rabinovitch Server Collection. She has received commissions from St John’s College and Caius College in Cambridge.
JOHNSON, Richard Born in 1949, he studied in High Wycombe (possibly at High Wycombe College of Art and Technology) before proceeding to the Royal College of Art. He worked from South London, mainly to commission, producing furniture as well as metalwork. JONES, A Edward Limited Although Albert Edward Jones (always referred to a AE Jones) died in 1954, his son Major Kenneth Crisp Jones managed the now limited company from a distance with the help of Percy Jarvis, who his father had employed in 1913. The company brought out quite innovative designs after the war and particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to having Michael Berry as an in-house designer, it also used freelance designers such as Geoffrey Bellamy and RG Baxendale. The company was taken over by CJ Vander in the 1990s. JONES, Sarah Born in 1948, she read medieval metalwork at the University of East Anglia. In the early 1970s working for the Greater London Arts Association, she was sent to interview Michael Murray, the ecclesiastical silversmith. She decided to become a silversmith after making a ring in Murray’s workshop and established her own workshop in Clerkenwell. She began selling at Camden Lock Market in 1974 and at Loot in 1975. Her own style soon emerged. A popular range were small silverrimmed vases filled with bunches of silver, silver gilt and enamel
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