Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Goldsmiths’ Company
The extraordinary duration of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s connection with the Goldsmiths’ Company illustrates in miniature one of the defining features of her reign: a continual and unwavering commitment to service, supporting the nation as it adapted to the challenges of the 20th and the 21st century.
Her Late Majesty first visited Goldsmiths’ Hall 76 years ago: as Princess Elizabeth, she attended a reception at the Hall on 13 June 1946 following the Peace Parade for Dominion and Colonial troops. Despite suffering a direct hit during the Blitz, Goldsmiths’ Hall would have been one of the few venues in central London capable of hosting such an event, and the photographs show her listening intently to the soldiers.
Five more visits were to follow over the course of her life – a source of immense pride for the Company, especially as no previous reigning monarch had visited the Hall. While these occasions included the pomp and ceremony usual at royal events, The Queen’s humour apparently put other guests at their ease.
In 1982 The Queen attended the opening of the Trial of the Pyx, marking the 700th anniversary of an order given by a much earlier monarch, Edward I. She asked one of the jury who was counting the coins how he came to be a member of the Company. He told her that his route through had been patrimony, as his father had been a freeman, to which she replied: ‘Oh yes, that’s an excellent system: I got my job in that way.’
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II visiting the Trial of the Pyx. Photography by Arthur Loosley.
Royalty has always been associated with beautiful objects, and over the course of her reign the Company commissioned numerous pieces in Her Late Majesty’s honour, some of which remain in our collection. One of the most significant is the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Cup, commissioned by the Goldsmiths’ Company to be presented for The Queen’s use at a banquet at Mansion House to mark her Coronation. The Queen drank from the cup during the banquet in an echo of the tradition that her namesake, Elizabeth I, had used the Company’s Bowes Cup during her own coronation feast. The Coronation Cup, designed by Professor Robert Goodden and made by Wakely & Wheeler, was then presented by The Queen to the Company’s Collection, in remembrance of her predecessor, Elizabeth I. It is regularly on display at Goldsmiths’ Hall.
Another important commission is the Golden Jubilee bowl, designed and made by Michael Lloyd in 2002. Its precious material, 22ct gold, evokes the second of her four milestone jubilees, but the engraved inscription provides weight of a different kind. It reads: ‘My whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service’: words taken from a broadcast made by the then Princess Elizabeth on her 21st birthday, while on tour in South Africa with her family, and now particularly poignant.
The experience of creating work for Her Late Majesty has undoubtedly had an impact on many craftspeople. When silversmith Miriam Hanid crafted silverwork for a walking stick presented to Queen Elizabeth II by the Drapers’ Company in 2012, she became part of an ‘extraordinary exchange of experience’ with her great-grandfather, Wali Mohamed, who had made two silver pieces, now in the Royal Collection, on the occasion of a royal visit to Kenya in 1952.
Leslie Durbin, Commemorative Paperweight, 1977.
An appreciation for the art of the goldsmith, past and present, might be seen in two of Queen Elizabeth II’s visits to the Goldsmiths’ Company: she came to an exhibition of the work of the 20th century master, Gerald Benney, in 1973, and attended a private view of an exhibition of the famed 18th century silversmith, Paul de Lamerie, in 1990. There has been a tradition of support for design and craftsmanship within the royal family: Her Late Majesty’s husband, Prince Philip, established the Duke of Edinburgh’s Design Award in 1959 while The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust was established in 1990 in memory of HM Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, and has helped numerous goldsmiths, engravers and enamelers.
The objects created for Her Late Majesty represent some of the best of British goldsmithing, but Queen Elizabeth II was associated with millions of pieces of gold, silver, platinum and palladium cherished by ordinary people, through the commemorative marks applied in her honour by the UK’s four Assay Offices. The first, showing her face in profile, was struck to celebrate her coronation in 1953. Others followed, for her Silver, Golden, Diamond and Platinum Jubilees. A paperweight bearing an enlarged version of the Silver Jubilee mark - her profile, modelled by Leslie Durbin - was given to Her Late Majesty by the Company in 1977. The Platinum Jubilee mark, which has been struck during 2022, was the first to be purely symbolic. Designed by Thomas Fattorini Ltd., it combines allusions to royalty and to the fineness symbol for platinum through an orb, containing Queen Elizabeth II’s cypher over the number 70. Tom Fattorini, Director of the firm, said they felt ‘very honoured to be asked via the British Hallmarking Council to come up with some suggestions’ for the design.
David Marshall, The Queen's Platinum Jubilee Brooch, 2022.
Bearing the Platinum Jubilee mark, the last specially-commissioned gift given by the Company to Her Late Majesty reflects what made her such an important part of British life. In offering condolences on the death of Her Late Majesty, the Company statement said that, ‘we were deeply honoured that Her Late Majesty accepted the gift of a brooch from the Company on the occasion of the Platinum Jubilee, adding her own touch to the design she had chosen by requesting the inclusion of lilies-of-the-valley – prominent in her Coronation bouquet - to go alongside the four national flowers of the United Kingdom. We were delighted that Her Late Majesty wore the brooch when she lit the first of 3,500 beacons across Britain during the Jubilee celebrations.’ The design represented national unity, but the circumstances in which she wore it are as important as its symbolism. At 96, Queen Elizabeth II met public hopes (and perhaps defied expectations) to attend jubilee events like the lighting of the beacon, to the last remaining a working monarch, dedicated to serving her country.