What is silversmithing?

Silversmithing is the craft of making objects out of silver by forming the metal itself - hammering a flat disc up into a bowl, seaming a beaker, soldering a spout, smoothing a surface true - rather than casting it or setting stones into it. It is the larger-scale, hollow-and-flatware end of the precious-metal trades, and it is distinct from the jeweller’s smaller work. I spent a morning at Hart’s in Chipping Campden, where the craft has been worked in the same building since 1902, and the sound of the place is the giveaway: not machinery, but the steady ringing of a hammer driving silver against a steel stake.

A silversmith and a jeweller both work precious metal, but they are different trades. The jeweller works small and often sets stones; the silversmith works larger and forms vessels - cups, bowls, dishes, candlesticks, church and civic plate - by raising and forging sheet and wire. The two share a bench vocabulary but the scale and the central skills part ways.

It is also not the same as casting or spinning, the two quicker ways to make a hollow shape. Casting pours molten silver into a mould; spinning presses a disc over a form on a lathe. Both have their place, but neither is raising. A raised vessel is worked up from a flat sheet by hand, blow by blow, and it carries the slight, deliberate facets of the planishing hammer that tell you a person made it and a machine did not.

Raising is the core technique: hammering a flat disc against a stake (a shaped steel anvil) in courses, working the metal up into a hollow form. Because hammering hardens silver and makes it brittle, the smith must keep annealing it - heating it to soften it again - between courses. Sinking hollows a dish down into a block rather than raising it up. Planishing is the final smoothing, light overlapping blows with a polished hammer that true the surface and leave its finish. Seaming joins an edge; soldering fixes spouts, handles and feet. The decorative branch of the trade, chasing and repoussé, works pattern into the metal from front and back.

It starts with a flat disc of silver and a stake. The smith hammers the disc down onto the stake in rings, each blow moving a little metal, working round and round and up, so the flat sheet slowly becomes a cone and then a curve. Every few courses the silver hardens to the point where another blow would split it, so it goes into the flame to be annealed soft again, and the raising goes on. A single bowl can take many cycles of raising and annealing.

When the form is right it is planished - smoothed with a mirror-faced hammer against a matching stake, the overlapping facets catching the light. Spouts, handles, feet and rims are made separately and soldered on; the whole piece is cleaned, and any decoration chased in. It is slow, physical, and unforgiving of a careless blow, and it produces objects built to outlast the people who own them - which is why so much of the trade’s surviving work is the plate of churches, colleges and companies.

The archive documented silversmithing at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in Chipping Campden, which is not just any workshop. It is the last working descendant of the Guild of Handicraft, the Arts and Crafts community that C. R. Ashbee moved out of London’s East End to the Cotswolds in 1902, and it still works in the Old Silk Mill the Guild took over then. At the bench the archive met David Hart, then eighty-seven and with some seventy years at that bench behind him, and his son William, who came to silver from a career in computer science - the family line and the unlikely route in, both in one room.

That continuity is the reason the visit matters. Most of what Ashbee built dispersed within a generation; Hart’s is the strand that did not, a direct, unbroken line of hand silversmithing from the Arts and Crafts movement to a workshop still taking commissions today.

Silversmithing as a whole is not on the brink - there are working smiths, college courses, and the support of the Goldsmiths’ Company and the assay-office system that hallmarks British silver. But the hand-raising end of it, and the small independent workshops that carry the deep traditional skills, are a narrow seam. The market is commissions and the high end; the training is long; and a workshop like Hart’s holds knowledge that exists in very few other places.

It is learned at the bench, by years of raising and annealing under someone who already has the touch. The archive’s Learn a Craft directory points to where silversmithing is taught and to the bodies that support it.

What is the difference between a silversmith and a jeweller?
A silversmith forms larger hollow and flat objects - bowls, cups, dishes, candlesticks - by raising and forging sheet silver, while a jeweller works at a smaller scale, setting stones and making personal ornament. The skills overlap but the scale and the techniques differ.

What is raising in silversmithing?
Raising is the central technique: a flat disc of silver is hammered repeatedly against a steel stake, working from the centre out in courses, so the metal is gradually drawn up into a hollow form such as a bowl or beaker. The silver work-hardens and is softened again by annealing between courses.

Is silver still worked by hand in England?
Yes. Hand silversmithing survives in a small number of workshops, including Hart Gold & Silversmiths in Chipping Campden - the last working descendant of C. R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft, in the Old Silk Mill since 1902.