Hart Silversmiths

As part of their 2015 Arts and Crafts Season, Compton Verney and The University of Warwick commissioned Hark to make a short documentary about Hart Silversmiths to feature in the exhibition Hart Silversmiths: a Living Tradition.

This film and the exhibition explores the evolution of a unique living tradition in design and silversmithing which has its origins in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Architect, designer and social reformer Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942) established The Guild of Handicraft in Whitechapel in 1888. Inspired by the anti-industrialism of John Ruskin and William Morris, Ashbee believed that good design and craftsmanship depended on good social conditions and in 1902 Ashbee, the guildsmen and their families, moved from their homes in London’s East End to the Cotswold town of Chipping Campden.

Among them was silversmith George Henry Hart (1882-1973). He and three subsequent generations of the Hart family continue in the Arts and Crafts tradition to this day, producing handmade silver in the same workshop in Chipping Campden. The film tells their remarkable story.