Gold and silver are precious: prized as a form of portable capital, essential for the mints and coinage, used to express power and status. Yet great skill was needed in the buying, the fashioning and the selling of either metal. Customers were demanding and often fickle. Very little plate or jewellery from the Elizabethan and Stuart period has survived because the material value often outweighed sentiment.  This makes the survival of the Goldsmiths’ Company treasures all the more special and the Cheapside Hoard truly remarkable.
 
This handsomely illustrated book is designed to accompany the opening of the new Goldsmiths’ Gallery at West Smithfield, part of the London Museum. In celebrating the Cheapside Hoard alongside historic pieces from the Goldsmiths’ Company, readers will be taken on a journey across the world in the wake of the plate, jewels and gemstones, and those who handled them, made them and used them.  The text also highlights the goldsmiths’ role in establishing London as an international centre of individual and collective creativity.  There are four chapters focusing on the Elizabethan and early Stuart capital, the goldsmiths’ trade, the Cheapside Hoard and London’s global networks.  Interwoven thematic sections explore specific craft skills and techniques, personal stories, trade practices, consumer taste and fashion.  Where possible plate and jewels are brought together to illustrate the rich tapestry of artisanal skills and networks.