Swages And Snarling Irons: 50 Years As A Silversmith

About the show

JOHN SPENCER: I started work as a silversmith in 1973 being apprenticed to my father Jack, although I had helped out in the workshop since the age of twelve so I already had a good grounding in the work. Dad's company was based in Sheffield and employed eighteen people making large silver items and a range of handmade jewellery.

The family also had a retail shop but due to a combination of events, at the age of twenty- three, my wife and I ended up in East Devon buying a shop in the market town of Honiton which I ran for thirty years until I semi-retired to Tavistock seven years ago.

TALK: My talk encompasses jobs and commissions carried out during those years, peo-ple I met, disasters averted - I once made a wedding ring for a young lady the Friday teatime before her marriage on the Saturday due to the failure of the shop from where she'd ordered it to deliver. She sat on a stool next to me, wringing her hands with fret un-til it was done. I also (after the technicians had dismantled them) completely refurbished the aerial arrays and wave guides from the top of the 850-foot-high transmission mast on nearby Stockland Hill - the same height and model as the one on Hessary Tor at Prince-town. I got a couple of trips up the mast as a condition of my fee!

I shall also talk about gemmology, antiques, the total collapse of the silverware industry in just ten years in the 1960, jobs done for wealthy clients in the Middle East and of course, stories of the most difficult and demanding creatures on this earth… customers (although I do this with great tact)!