G-khan
04-14-2003, 12:24 PM
LONDON LIVES: Market values, craftsmen's values ; London can still boast some of the finest goldsmiths in the world - but only a few, now that the apprentice system has fallen into decline, says CHRISTOPHER HAMILTON
Source: "Independent on Sunday, The"
Publication date: 2003-04-13
Like my fellow apprentices in Florence, where I trained as a goldsmith, I seldom considered the value of what passed daily through our hands. We handled large amounts of gold and some extraordinarily beautiful stones. But none of this belonged to us. We were detached. Instead, we found ourselves indoctrinated, by stealth, with values. Principally, these concerned qualities of workmanship and pride in a finished piece. Whether we absorbed some of this by osmosis from our surroundings, as we bicycled through Piazza della Signoria and across the Ponte Vecchio, I do not know. After all, there are some very fine craftsmen in Hatton Garden and their street is an unlovely one.
On Monday mornings, when my meagre wages were all but spent on wine and beautiful Florentine girls, I consoled myself with the fact that bankruptcy was sired in Italy, by English kings, out of silly bankers. Indeed, the term bankrupt comes from the Italian, banco rotto, or broken bench: insolvent goldsmith-bankers were put out of business by the simple expedient of chopping up their workbenches. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the streets of Florence, Pisa and Lucca were strewn with splintered wood, as Anglo Saxon fundamentalists, thieves and profiteers took up the cross and let down their banks. History seems set to repeat itself.
Anyone who works physical gold understands its qualities of purity, ductility and, above all, detached nobility. But those who merely trade in it can become poor as well as rich - as hedge fund managers dealing in gold futures have learnt. Gold simply is. If you buy it as an investment, then do as Indians do and carry it on your person. Gold is of more interest to the poor than it is to the rich. It is also, on the human scale, heavy: one man can carry only so much. Spanish ships greedily overloaded in the New World now tell their story from the bottom of the Atlantic.
Peter Carl Faberge, the great Russian goldsmith of refugee Huguenot stock had, at the peak of his activity, some 700 skilled employees. Most were Finns. Faberge specialised in what he considered to be works of art. He cared little for the market value of the materials that passed through his workshops in St Petersburg and Moscow but delighted himself and his clients with workmanship, much of which was highly experimental at the time. He knew that enamels adhere better to copper than silver but that if he must use silver as a base, the greater the content of copper in it the better would be the quality of the enamelling.
In 1911, Faberge made the mistake of going nose to nose with The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in a scrap involving values. From his shop in Dover Street, he held that pieces of his were works of art. Therefore, his lawyers argued, they should not fall prey to the vulgarities of trade, where the market value of material presides, and that they should not be subject to British hallmarking restrictions. Court papers in one redbound folder in the library upstairs in the Goldsmiths Hall make for interesting reading. Vested interests prevailed at the High Court, under the pretence that they were protecting the coin of the realm. In fact, Faberge, the outsider, was seen as a threat to the established trade.
While the practice of hallmarking is the oldest form of consumer protection in Britain, its role had declined by 1911, to protect a growing - and profitable - market in mass-produced nine-carat gold. This isn't really gold at all. Shiny it may be, but it contains only a little over one third of that metal. Could sugar be so diluted under our laws and still be sold as sugar? In medieval Venice, where consumer protection was taken more seriously, he would have been disembowelled and thrown into a canal. Nine- carat gold is an alloy of (in the case of yellow nine carat gold) copper and silver - with just 37.5 per cent gold. This institutionalised legerdemain has done much to assist the decline of the quality trade, both in its value - and its values.
Birmingham and London can boast some of the finest craftsmen in the world, especially in silversmithing, but they are few and the tradition of apprenticeship has all but disappeared. Art School graduates are never taken seriously by the trade until they have spent time in a workshop performing often repetitive but essential tasks at the bench.
What craftsmen in Hatton Garden share with their Florentine counterparts, apart from great skill, is a degree of modesty and a desire to be rated only by their peers. British jewellers shops these days seldom perform their own repairs. In most cases, work is sent to jobbers, often in Birmingham where rates are lower. Proper hand engraving, something in which the English have long excelled, is now seriously at risk of disappearing altogether. Letter engraving represents the most highly developed point in a craft to which there are no short cuts. Cash-rich, time-poor people just cannot hack it any more.
The British trade is now infinitesimally small compared with that in Italy, where the tradition of apprenticeship flourishes still, especially in family firms where values still prevail. One family firm near Valenza is built around leftish, William Morrisish, ideals. When I asked its founder why he had built his state-of-the- art factories in the countryside where he was born, he answered that he wished to "give something back". EU agricultural policy had mechanised the land and thrown people out of work. So he employs 120 people at an average age of 23. They have learnt to work at the highest level. The company consumes up to two tons of gold a year - less than a Vicenza chainmaker at 50-60 tons, but a substantial amount when you consider that its output goes to Harry Winston, Chopard and Bulgari - and some famous names in London. Even here, there is real joy in fine work and enthusiasm for the physical properties of gold. As one young worker pointed out: "It will do anything for you. Gold is so forgiving. Gold doesn't care."
Publication date: 2003-04-13
http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=38055208&ID=cnniw&scategory=Metals+%26+Minerals%3APrecious&
Source: "Independent on Sunday, The"
Publication date: 2003-04-13
Like my fellow apprentices in Florence, where I trained as a goldsmith, I seldom considered the value of what passed daily through our hands. We handled large amounts of gold and some extraordinarily beautiful stones. But none of this belonged to us. We were detached. Instead, we found ourselves indoctrinated, by stealth, with values. Principally, these concerned qualities of workmanship and pride in a finished piece. Whether we absorbed some of this by osmosis from our surroundings, as we bicycled through Piazza della Signoria and across the Ponte Vecchio, I do not know. After all, there are some very fine craftsmen in Hatton Garden and their street is an unlovely one.
On Monday mornings, when my meagre wages were all but spent on wine and beautiful Florentine girls, I consoled myself with the fact that bankruptcy was sired in Italy, by English kings, out of silly bankers. Indeed, the term bankrupt comes from the Italian, banco rotto, or broken bench: insolvent goldsmith-bankers were put out of business by the simple expedient of chopping up their workbenches. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the streets of Florence, Pisa and Lucca were strewn with splintered wood, as Anglo Saxon fundamentalists, thieves and profiteers took up the cross and let down their banks. History seems set to repeat itself.
Anyone who works physical gold understands its qualities of purity, ductility and, above all, detached nobility. But those who merely trade in it can become poor as well as rich - as hedge fund managers dealing in gold futures have learnt. Gold simply is. If you buy it as an investment, then do as Indians do and carry it on your person. Gold is of more interest to the poor than it is to the rich. It is also, on the human scale, heavy: one man can carry only so much. Spanish ships greedily overloaded in the New World now tell their story from the bottom of the Atlantic.
Peter Carl Faberge, the great Russian goldsmith of refugee Huguenot stock had, at the peak of his activity, some 700 skilled employees. Most were Finns. Faberge specialised in what he considered to be works of art. He cared little for the market value of the materials that passed through his workshops in St Petersburg and Moscow but delighted himself and his clients with workmanship, much of which was highly experimental at the time. He knew that enamels adhere better to copper than silver but that if he must use silver as a base, the greater the content of copper in it the better would be the quality of the enamelling.
In 1911, Faberge made the mistake of going nose to nose with The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in a scrap involving values. From his shop in Dover Street, he held that pieces of his were works of art. Therefore, his lawyers argued, they should not fall prey to the vulgarities of trade, where the market value of material presides, and that they should not be subject to British hallmarking restrictions. Court papers in one redbound folder in the library upstairs in the Goldsmiths Hall make for interesting reading. Vested interests prevailed at the High Court, under the pretence that they were protecting the coin of the realm. In fact, Faberge, the outsider, was seen as a threat to the established trade.
While the practice of hallmarking is the oldest form of consumer protection in Britain, its role had declined by 1911, to protect a growing - and profitable - market in mass-produced nine-carat gold. This isn't really gold at all. Shiny it may be, but it contains only a little over one third of that metal. Could sugar be so diluted under our laws and still be sold as sugar? In medieval Venice, where consumer protection was taken more seriously, he would have been disembowelled and thrown into a canal. Nine- carat gold is an alloy of (in the case of yellow nine carat gold) copper and silver - with just 37.5 per cent gold. This institutionalised legerdemain has done much to assist the decline of the quality trade, both in its value - and its values.
Birmingham and London can boast some of the finest craftsmen in the world, especially in silversmithing, but they are few and the tradition of apprenticeship has all but disappeared. Art School graduates are never taken seriously by the trade until they have spent time in a workshop performing often repetitive but essential tasks at the bench.
What craftsmen in Hatton Garden share with their Florentine counterparts, apart from great skill, is a degree of modesty and a desire to be rated only by their peers. British jewellers shops these days seldom perform their own repairs. In most cases, work is sent to jobbers, often in Birmingham where rates are lower. Proper hand engraving, something in which the English have long excelled, is now seriously at risk of disappearing altogether. Letter engraving represents the most highly developed point in a craft to which there are no short cuts. Cash-rich, time-poor people just cannot hack it any more.
The British trade is now infinitesimally small compared with that in Italy, where the tradition of apprenticeship flourishes still, especially in family firms where values still prevail. One family firm near Valenza is built around leftish, William Morrisish, ideals. When I asked its founder why he had built his state-of-the- art factories in the countryside where he was born, he answered that he wished to "give something back". EU agricultural policy had mechanised the land and thrown people out of work. So he employs 120 people at an average age of 23. They have learnt to work at the highest level. The company consumes up to two tons of gold a year - less than a Vicenza chainmaker at 50-60 tons, but a substantial amount when you consider that its output goes to Harry Winston, Chopard and Bulgari - and some famous names in London. Even here, there is real joy in fine work and enthusiasm for the physical properties of gold. As one young worker pointed out: "It will do anything for you. Gold is so forgiving. Gold doesn't care."
Publication date: 2003-04-13
http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=38055208&ID=cnniw&scategory=Metals+%26+Minerals%3APrecious&