Stylish Silver Jewellery

As readers will know, Hughes, now in his mid-80s, was himself an influential participant in the craft debate. When art director at Goldsmiths’ Hall and chairman of the Craft Centre of Great Britain, he not only promoted traditional design in gold and silver but actively encouraged the innovative use of alternative materials and expressive flights of the imagination. He laments the lack of recognition given to the crafts but barely at hints at disagreements in the design world occasioned by the way in which the Goldsmiths’ Company patronised expensively desirable pieces and the Crafts Council promoted radical, cutting edge, yet unwearable designs. When Hughes bought Ramshaw’s work for the Goldsmiths’ collection in 1970 he had already overcome some initial resistance from the traditionalist Company, and gave an important boost to her career. But in 1972, the idea that the Victoria and Albert Museum might acquire her pieces was rejected by its director John Pope-Hennessy, and only agreed under the directorship of Roy Strong. In 1975, when the Science Museum also acquired examples of Watkins’s work in acrylic and silver, the purchase of jewellery was unprecedented. The purpose was to demonstrate Watkins’s technological achievement in heat-forming, bonding and colouring a single object in the new material, acrylic. the end of the book the artists have added 31 pages of descriptive “Notes” to the plates. They contain much useful information omitted from the text and the brief picture captions. For the insights they offer into the artists’ thinking these notes may rank among the most fascinating and revealing sections of the book.