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Many business leaders take the long view, but likely not quite so long as Annie Warburton. The clerk and chief executive of the Goldsmiths’ Company wants to ensure everything the membership organisation does not only respects its near 700-year history, but equally considers “700 years hence”. “We’re here because of our ancestors,” she says. “How can we be good ancestors to the future?”
A livery company of the City of London, the Goldsmiths’ Company will celebrate its 700th anniversary in 2027, having received its first royal charter in 1327. However, it has been testing and marking objects and jewellery made from precious metals since 1300, something it continues to do at the London Assay Office.
Despite this rich legacy, Warburton describes the company, based at the opulent Grade I-listed Goldsmiths’ Hall a short walk from St Paul’s Cathedral, as a “hidden gem”. “There’s so much variety to what it does, but it’s not really known as much as it could or should be,” she says. It was this “area for biggest potential for change” that attracted the former chief executive of craft social enterprise Cockpit to her current role, which she started in January 2024.
Now, the organisation is taking action to raise its profile. In January, it revealed a new logo of the leopard’s head for use across the Goldsmiths’ Company, the London Assay Office, the recently renamed Goldsmiths’ Foundation, and the Goldsmiths’ Centre, a charity that provides training and workspace for jewellers and silversmiths. Warburton says the company wanted a design that encapsulated tradition — the leopard is an element of its coat of arms and the London assay mark — yet was “certainly more approachable than a big old coat of arms”.
The rebranding fits a wider ambition to be “more relatable”. “What we’re looking to do over the next few years is be much more literally and metaphorically open: bring people in, share our stories, get people ignited about what we do and why we’re here, and why it’s relevant to them — whether that’s coming in and seeing an exhibition, or actually a career as a jeweller,” says Warburton, the first woman to lead the Goldsmiths’ Company, which has about 130 staff and more than 1,800 members.
Work will start in July on remodelling the ground-floor former assay office at Goldsmiths’ Hall into a multipurpose space for public exhibitions, events and talks. (The assay office moved to another part of the building in 2020). The £5.9mn revamp, designed by historic building specialists Nick Cox Architects, is scheduled for completion in time for next year’s Goldsmiths’ Fair, a selling event held every autumn.
Warburton says the opening exhibition in 2027 will celebrate contemporary jewellery from the 1960s to the present day. It will feature pieces from the company’s own “world-class” collection of contemporary jewellery and silver, from which Warburton borrows for special occasions, including this interview and subsequent photo shoot, so as “to be able to tell stories . . . and be an ambassador” for the industry.
Loans from the collection, which is being digitised along with the company’s archives to make them publicly available online, will be displayed at the London Museum, which opens at its new Smithfield site next year. The museum, to which the company’s charity pledged £10mn, will have The Goldsmiths’ Gallery showcasing the Cheapside Hoard of Elizabethan and Stuart jewellery, with pieces from the company’s collection telling the wider story of jewellery and silversmithing.
Philanthropy is one aspect of the company Warburton thinks receives little attention, despite its charitable giving amounting to about £4mn a year. In February, the Goldsmiths’ Foundation (formerly the Goldsmiths’ Company Charity) announced a new board of trustees and refocused its support on vocational skills and training, jewellery and silversmithing, and the wider creative industries.
As part of its anniversary celebrations, and before Warburton started as chief executive, the organisation allocated four landmark grants of £500,000 each from what will be a £10mn fund. The benefiting projects include the restoration and regilding of the cupola, ball and cross atop St Paul’s Cathedral, a scheme that has personal resonance for Warburton. She says her grandfather, Charles Kenward, gilded the Statue of Justice on the Old Bailey (the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales) in 1937.
Another project supports the Goldsmiths’ Institute at Aston University Engineering Academy, which prepares young people for work in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Warburton chaired the industry panel that developed the fledgling T-level qualification in craft and design.
Her role as creative director of the Crafts Council between 2014 and 2018 included policy, and she is keen to expand the Goldsmiths’ Company’s role as an ear to and voice for the jewellery and silversmithing trade. She says, however, that compared with “fashion and textiles, or the film industry, the lack of sufficient rigorous data on the size, scale and scope and make-up of our industry is really hobbling our advocacy”. The company is exploring the potential for research with partners. Without data, she says, the UK jewellery industry feels “really healthy”, although she is concerned about the pipeline of talent.
But what can we expect from the next 700 years? Warburton would like to see a “thriving” industry “where anyone with talent, wherever they are, can discover and develop that and achieve their potential”, and a similarly healthy market. “[I hope] that we celebrate skills into the future and the stories that jewellery tells,” she says.