House of Benney Handmade: By Royal Appointment

TAPPING

My father, who was quite a character and had always

loads of stories to tell, was using one of these hammers.

He was hand-raising a piece of silver with this

smooth-headed hammer, and he caught the edge, made a mark,

which normally you would file out or polish out and start again,

but he thought, in this case, "I might just repeat this,"

which he did, and out came this sort of texturing here.

And he thought, "This could be really interesting,"

so, he just developed it

and decided that the easiest way of repeating it

is not to keep on using the edge of the hammer,

but to carve in a section of this texture into the hammerhead,

which he's done here, and as you're hand-raising a piece of silver,

as you're hitting the metal, out comes this texture.

Simon Benney holds three Royal warrants as a gold and silversmith.

In the 1970s, his father ran a firm employing 25 staff,

but today, House of Benney is a modestly sized design business.

His exquisite handmade objects in precious metals

are renowned for their stunning enamel work.

As well as crafting bespoke objects for the Royal household,

Simon creates beautiful individual pieces for private clients.

Silversmith Alan Evans has worked with Simon

and his father for nearly 60 years.

The texturing that is the signature feature of Benney silverware

is still known in the trade as Benney Bark.

And that's Benney Bark.

COFFEE MACHINE WHIRS

What I'm working on now is a commission for a client

who would like a pendant for his wife's 50th birthday party.

So, the very first thing is there'd be normally a phone call or

a quick chat about roughly what they'd like.

I then start here, with doing some rough sketches,

just getting ideas in my head.

Also, ideas of colour -

we have, like, 50 different colours of enamel.

So, I grew up in a house

where we had a workshop attached to the house.

So, I grew up literally going into the workshop with my father

and bashing bowls around and plates and hand-raising copper dishes

and things like that.

And not many kids have that opportunity.

'What's made here?

'Gerald Benney, the silversmith who designed the altar bed

'for Coventry Cathedral, specialises in formal and ceremonial work.

'As so much of his silverwork is too costly for ordinary people

'to own, Gerald Benney has now turned his talent to designing

'cutlery, in stainless steel as well as in silver.'

Dad was very technical,

he was a designer in the true sense of the word.

I basically design the same way.

I make sort of prettier drawings, rather than technical drawings,

but the silver industry as a whole has gone through huge changes.

All the big factories in the Midlands have all gone,

and what is left are people like me,

artist craftsmen who do special one-off commissions.

It's very niche, it's not that huge, but you do make,

hopefully make, some very beautiful things.

'You'd never expect to find

'such a workshop as this inside a sleepy country house.'

One thing that hasn't changed since the days of Simon's father

is the young silversmith filmed here in 1965.

Alan Evans is still working with Simon Benney today.

I must have been either 23 or 24.

The thing with the ladle was purely the cameraman's idea,

we don't normally do that.

I started as an apprentice in 1953.

It was a rather good job -

I was making a spout for a coffee pot on the first day I started.

Alan started work in Gerald Benney's London workshop

at a time of real change in British society.

Out of the workshop in Whitfield Place,

you could look straight out onto the Post Office Tower being built.

It was the new age.

The enthusiasm for a modern way of living had a significant effect

on the industry in which Gerald was an important figure.

'Just drink in the elegance of this young artist's tableware.'

The days when middle-class families had their own silverware have gone,

but Gerald was a canny operator

and his cutlery and tableware designs were licensed

and mass-produced in stainless steel.

Nowadays, how many people want to have a silver tea set to clean?

People probably want their new BMWs as a status symbol,

rather than silver.

This house here is where I was brought up.

I was born here in '66.

My parents bought the house in 1962, I think, from memory.

Of course, in the early '60s,

you could buy an old country house like this for very little money.

They weren't rich by any means, so they literally bought a wreck.

Their bedroom was here -

I mention that because I was born in this bedroom

on New Year's Day, during one of my parents' many parties,

but Dad delivered me, which was curious,

and then he went back to the party afterwards,

so Mum was up there with me on New Year's Day

with the party raging downstairs.

When I was a kid, sort of seven, eight years old,

I started going into the workshop

and bashing bits of metal around, which used to drive Alan crazy.

I first saw Simon when he was a day old, and as he grew up...

He used to go off to school, but when he was at home,

there was this period of time when we had a job to keep him

out of the workshop, because every time he came in,

he couldn't leave anything alone, so, he would pick up a hammer

and you'd say, "No, put that down, Simon."

Anyway, I'm glad that's over with!

After a consultation with his client,

Simon brings his ideas for the pendant to Alan for appraisal.

There you go, that's the idea about the pendant...

The advantage of such a bespoke piece

is that the pendant will be a highly personalised item.

George's wife, Lucy, is on the Court of the Mercers.

In their crest is this Mercers' Maiden.

Well, I think the best way to do this hinge is to...

instead of having it on the side, to have it on the top.

OK.

With the design agreed, work can begin.

Like so much else in the workshop, the 1953 milling lathe

came from Gerald Benney's workshop at Beenham House,

and has been lovingly maintained by Alan ever since.

The main body of the pendant will be made from

two pieces of 18-carat gold.

Of course, everything that comes off, the scrap,

always goes back and they re-melt it

and that will probably be the next lot that we buy.

You never really know where the gold actually comes from.

Whether it's from a mine or from Brink's-Mat, we don't know.

This is the front part of the pendant.

We are turning this out to take the enamel.

The racks of ancient silversmithing tools contain many items

that are genuine museum pieces.

Dad got them from some of the old workshops which were going bust

in Sheffield and Birmingham, they had thousands

and thousands of tools just lying around,

and you could come and pick them up and buy them.

Just went up and filled the back of the boot, you know, full of all the tools,

brought it back to Beenham. So, some of these guys are 100 years old.

There's one particular tool here

that I used when I was an apprentice.

It's very rusty now, because it hasn't been used for many years,

but it used to make chalice bases.

This is one of our simplest beakers, it would be called a 101 beaker.

They are normally textured, that kind of classic bark texture.

The hammer marks - we use a flat, polished hammer

instead of a carved hammer, which leaves all these hammer marks in,

then we do a light polish, which makes it nice and bright,

but doesn't polish out all these hammer marks,

because it creates a nice ripple effect.

Like his father, Simon is amongst a very select group who have

simultaneously held four Royal warrants.

Royal warrants are very significant to me, especially with new clients.

It's kind of a seal of approval - the Royal family,

who obviously love your work, have given you a Royal warrant.

So, it must be a certain quality or a certain standard

and a certain amount of trust,

which, if you can get that very early on in a relationship,

it becomes so much easier,

because they basically trust what you can do for them.

It's very personal.

Say, if you were supplying cornflakes -

there would be no real direct relationship, particularly.

But with what I do, it is a very personal thing, it's very personal

gifts you're making, so from that point of view, it's lovely,

because you do get a feel for how they operate, the family.

I did a blue bowl for the Queen - I didn't actually meet the Queen -

some key rings for Princess Diana.

The 101 beaker starts as a flat circle of silver and is gradually

raised by repeated hammering over different-shaped formers.

You could probably raise up the shape within a day, then, say,

another two or three hours to smooth it out again.

It's a state of mind, isn't it, really?

If your mind wanders too much, then you find that things can go wrong.

It's a bit like driving, isn't it?

If you're driving a car, you're not thinking, "I must change gear now,"

a certain amount of automation takes over, but you're still thinking

about what you're doing, otherwise you run into the bloke in front.

The back of the pendant, which is to be engraved with

a picture of the client's daughter, is cut from a sheet of gold.

The difficulty is not breaking the blade.

Right, that has got to be flattened off now,

so when the two pieces come together, they will meet neatly.

But the trouble is, when you enamel,

because it's oval, sometimes it will alter the geometry of it slightly.

This gold tubing, I'll cut three pieces off,

which make what we call the knuckles of the hinge.

There it is, right.

Many years ago, I was doing a ring, with this valuable sapphire.

It was quite a largish stone, and what happened was,

it dropped down this hole at the back and ended up inside

and it took me about seven or eight hours to find it.

These are the three components of the hinge of the pendant.

The middle one is attached to the rear of the pendant

and the outer two are attached to the front.

The middle one has the loop on, to take the chain, like that.

At this point, progress is interrupted by a vital stage

in the manufacture of any item of gold or silver.

Simon must take the pendant to be hallmarked.

The name comes from the mark given at the Assay Office

at the Goldsmiths' Hall in the City of London.

In order to qualify as 18-carat,

it needs to contain 750 parts per thousand of pure gold.

The gold content, which is the one we are primarily interested in,

as that tells us whether it is up to standard or not.

The hallmark contains Simon's own maker's mark,

the crown for a gold item,

the gold content,

the leopard's head symbol of the London Assay Office

and a lower-case "r" for 2016.

In order not to distort the shape

of such a small item with a hammered stamp,

the hallmark can be burnt onto the pendant with a laser.

Yup, absolutely perfect. Thank you.

The Goldsmiths' Hall has regulated the trade in precious metals

and looked after the interests of its members

since its establishment in 1339.

The Benney name is held in high esteem here.

Simon's father, Gerald, brought about something of

an Elizabethan Renaissance in English silversmithing,

and Simon is meeting one of his most ardent collectors.

They've taken 25 years to put together...

John is to curate an exhibition of work by both Simon

and his father in Hong Kong next year.

It will be their first joint show.

There are 45 examples of Gerald Benney's boxes on the table,

many of which Simon has never seen.

This is a classic of the period,

sort of Scandinavian influenced, very clean lines.

A very beautiful piece.

Gerald began to seek an alternative to the prevailing Scandinavian

look after an American woman visited his workshop in the early 1960s,

seeking English silverware.

"But, Mr Benney, this isn't modern English silver, it's Scandinavian!"

After that incident, he set about altering the very way

that he worked, and this is in House Beautiful of June 1962 -

"I am trying to design silver which is immediately

"recognisable as English.

"I think English silver should be rugged, solid and functional,

"but at the same time, modern."

One of Britain's best-kept secrets is the quality of its craftsmanship

and design with silver, and your father is instrumental in that.

Gerald's boxes were mainly made as commemorative gifts.

This one has been engraved with a prospect

of the Ford Motor Company's Dagenham factory.

The Hong Kong exhibition will include some of Gerald's pieces

from the Goldsmiths' own collection.

This chalice shows the influence of contemporary British sculptors

like Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.

They also have a coffee pot

from a set made for Number 10 Downing Street.

Well, in the 1960s, this was the time

when Gerald really became well known as a designer-silversmith,

particularly of modern tableware, and here at Goldsmiths' Hall,

we use the 50 settings that we commissioned from him

for cutlery every week at lunch.

He was a very modest man.

Here was someone who had four Royal warrants, who would just,

as an aside, say, "By the way, I'm going to be staying

"at Balmoral next week, so you won't be able to get hold of me."

But Gerald's significance extended beyond his own work.

As Principal of the Royal College of Art, he inspired future generations.

He has been THE major influence - no other country in the world

is as good at modern silver design as we are.

We have 66 living silversmiths who are all antiques of the future.

Now bearing its hallmark, the next stage for the pendant

is a visit to two relics of London's once flourishing silver industry,

who are still making a living doing things by hand.

The trade itself is completely dying.

We are dinosaurs, we are a dying industry.

People want technology sooner -

new TV, new phone.

Now, this has come in for a refurb, it needs a little flick-up.

So, that would be what you would call the outside done,

but to do the inside, we have to make our own little tools.

I worked for Gerald for about 28 years.

He was very what I would have called Edwardian.

Always turned up in a nice big car with his chauffeur.

I remember one occasion, he sent me two five-light candlesticks.

I rang him up and said, "They're done."

He sent his daughter that afternoon to collect them.

She turned up in a sports car.

I said, "You're never going to get them in there."

She said, "No, they'll be all right."

"Are you going back to work now?" She said, "Yeah."

At the time, she was working at Buckingham Palace for Princess Diana,

so the car was quite safe being parked up with the boxes in it!

On the other side of the workshop,

the design for the engraving is finalised.

So, the Plasticine goes onto the back of the paper.

Once you draw through with a point,

this will leave a fine line of Plasticine

on the surface of the metal,

which you then can draw over with a fine scribing line,

and from the fine scribing line, you can engrave

the outline that you are eventually going to cut up to,

to remove all the background of the metal.

Steve grudgingly admits that there are machines that do engraving now,

but the human touch still gives the best result.

With an engraving tool, it's about catching the light,

so, you can do a cut that you turn it round

and it will look sort of positive or negative,

whereas a piece that's done on a machine or on a laser,

for the most part, once it's in metal, looks flat.

You still need to be able to look at something and think,

well, if I put a little flick over the top of her eye,

it will look slightly different, whereas the machine doesn't do that.

The pendant now makes its final journey

to London's Jewellery Quarter,

to a basement in Hatton Garden...

..where the diamonds will be added.

This is the enamel we are going to use on the pendant.

It's an emerald green colour.

Basically, it's a type of glass with metal oxides to colour it.

The green - I believe arsenic is used, and barium.

Some usually nasty things like that.

So, we have to grind this.

Now we're ready for applying it to the job.

Gerald Benney's enthusiasm for enamelling began in Sloane Square,

when he saw a multicoloured display of towels in the window

of Peter Jones and decided what his work needed was colour.

Enamelling was something of a lost art,

since the demise of the Russian jeweller Carl Faberge.

Gerald made a trip to Zurich to the firm of Burch-Korrodi,

where he tracked down legendary enameller Berger Bergersen

and persuaded him to come and stay at Beenham House.

He was a very tall, slightly heavily built Norwegian.

He had a great sense of humour, spoke very good English.

You'd get him coming out with English puns,

he was a great linguist.

He taught us what you really needed to know.

You are learning all the time, with enamelling.

Bergersen had learned his art from emigre Russian jewellers

who had worked in St Petersburg, and Gerald was proud to be able

to trace his enamelling DNA straight back to Faberge himself.

Simon has inherited his father's love

for deep, lustrous colours in enamel.

This goes on the stand.

The material is the ceramic that they used

on the space shuttle tiles.

It's ideal for firing enamel on.

It's not so bad on something like this,

but if it's a beaker, where you've got the enamel on the sides,

you have to make sure it's perfectly dry,

otherwise it just drops off the moment you put it in the kiln.

TIMER BELL RINGS

Several enamel items Alan made during his time working with Gerald

are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

But he doesn't let that sort of thing go to his head.

I don't think I'm particularly proud, no.

It's pleasing, but if you're exhibited in a museum,

it tends to make you feel a bit older!

The sense of depth created by the combination of the glass

and underlying textured gold becomes apparent

as the pendant gently cools.

Well, what we've got here is a motor with a felt mop,

and what we have to do is

use a pumice and water to polish the enamel.

MUSIC: River Man by Nick Drake

I moved down here about 16 years ago.

It's just beautiful, it really is beautiful.

I go to London about twice a week,

to see clients and to meet with my suppliers.

It's kind of a perfect combination of living here with the family,

but working, part of the week anyway, in London.

It's a lovely place to work - I can sit out in the garden

and have my pencil and paper and just feel very calm,

let thoughts gather and do lots of sketching.

It's quite nice to have that kind of calming environment

to design in, because sometimes if it's too frantic, too many things

going on, it's quite difficult to get good thoughts in your head.

But it's much easier out here.

I'm very different from my father.

Although I have carried on in the same vein, we are quite different.

I'm not too worried about dynasty.

If one of the kids wants to follow on, fantastic,

but if they don't, are interested and passionate

about something else which they love

and hopefully are successful at, that will give me

as much enjoyment as if they were part of Benney going forward.

When I die, I want my ashes up there.

Scatter them right at that little tree at the end.

Make sure the wind is going, like, that direction!

Yes, it's not too bad. It has turned out reasonably well.

I'm never really pleased with something when it's finished.

You can always improve on anything, really.

I like to be a perfectionist.

-My wife says I am.

-HE CHUCKLES

What I love about this particular little pendant is that

it's got all the elements which show off some of the skills we have.

That is stone setting, enamelling -

the green at the front and the lovely red enamel at the back -

hinge making and engraving.

The guys who helped me with this have done an amazing job,

and they are all experts in their field.

The actual overall feel of it is pretty much as I wanted.

So, yeah, very happy.