Somerset-based steel polisher Stephen M Goldsmith has been named Valuable Metalworker of the Yr at an awards presentation held at Wentworth Woodhouse.
The award, supported by The Royal Mint, features a £2,000 prize and a trophy. It recognises a heritage craftsperson who has made a major contribution to valuable metalworking over the previous 12 months.
Goldsmith has labored as a polisher for greater than 50 years and has been concerned within the ending of a variety of high-profile silverware, together with the Premier League trophy and the America’s Cup.
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Over the previous 12 months, he was additionally commissioned to help within the manufacture of the brand new Order of the Royal Household.
The award is run by Heritage Crafts, a nationwide charity established 15 years in the past to assist conventional craft abilities. The organisation is thought for its Purple Checklist of Endangered Crafts, which assesses the viability of heritage crafts within the UK.
Sharpening is amongst a lot of specialist abilities listed underneath the ‘silver allied trades’ class on Heritage Crafts’ Purple Checklist of Endangered Crafts. The charity has mentioned the decline of conventional manufacturing centres has made it more durable for practitioners to maintain their work.
The judging panel included Dan Thomas, King’s Assay Grasp at The Royal Mint, Gordon Summers, chief engraver at The Royal Mint, silversmith Rauni Higson MBE, and final 12 months’s winner, silver spinner Warren Martin.
The opposite finalists have been silversmith Angela Cork, principal of the Bishopsland Academic Belief, and silversmith Alice Fry, who specialises in chasing and repoussé methods.
The Royal Mint and Heritage Crafts started their partnership in 2023 and have since awarded 13 coaching bursaries to early-career practitioners working with valuable metals.
Goldsmith mentioned: “Profitable this award is a gigantic honour, and to be recognised by The Royal Mint feels extremely particular. I’ve spent over fifty years preserving and sprucing the nation’s most valuable items, usually quietly behind the scenes, so to have my craft acknowledged on this approach is each humbling and deeply rewarding.
“Awards like these shine a lightweight on heritage crafts which may in any other case go unnoticed, giving craftspeople recognition and encouragement. They’re a reminder that these abilities nonetheless have an important place in fashionable society and assist to safeguard the way forward for these traditions.”
He added: “This award provides me a wider platform to champion the craft of sprucing and opens doorways for instructing and galvanizing new apprentices, supporting my ongoing mission to go on the data I’ve gained from a lifetime working with valuable steel. I at all times needed to satisfy a valuable steel polisher with 50 years’ expertise – and now I’ve turn out to be that craftsman!”
