STUART DEVLIN: A rare silver and silver-gilt hand-forged table service of flatware and cutlery

London 1977, with additional Queen's Jubilee mark (58)

Footnotes

STUART DEVLIN AO CMG (1931 - 2018)

Australian silversmith, jeweller and designer. Stuart Devlin ranks as one of the great contemporary gold and silversmiths and has been acclaimed by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths as the designer with 'the Midas touch'.

Stuart Devlin, was born in Geelong, Australia in 1931. He trained at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and, in 1958, and won a number of scholarships including one to study silversmithing under Professor Robert Goodden at the Royal College of Art, London. After spending a two year fellowship at Columbia University in America in 1962 he returned to Australia to teach and rose to become an inspector of art schools. In 1964, Stuart Devlin won a competition to design Australia's first decimal coinage. Devlin went on to be an accomplished coin designer, designing coins for over 36 countries worldwide and many more medallions and the medals for the founding awards of the Australian honours system in 1975.

On his return to London, in January 1965, Devlin set up a small workshop in Clerkenwell and the following year he employed his first craftsman. Devlin created new techniques and produced a wide variety of textures, filigree forms and gilding to create his distinctive style. Devlin aimed to design pieces that added 'delight, surprise, intrigue, and even amusement', this especially can be seen in his commercially successful limited edition novelty eggs and boxes.

In 1972 Devlin transferred his retail gallery to the ground floor of his St. John street workshop in Clerkenwell. After a sell-out collection at Asprey, Collingwoods of Conduit Street in London's West End set aside an entire floor exclusively for his work to hold regular exhibitions. Between 1979 and 1985 in partnership with the Duke of Westminster he set up a prestigious showroom in Conduit Street almost opposite Collingwoods. Devlin closed his London showroom in 1987.

Devlin was made a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company by special grant in 1966 and elected a liveryman in 1972. In 1980 he was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George 'for services to the art of design' and in 1982 was granted the Royal Warrant of Appointment as Goldsmith and Jeweller to Queen Elizabeth II. He was Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths Company 1996 – 1997.

The Goldsmiths' Centre situated in Clerkenwell, was developed from a discussion in 2006 between Stuart Devlin, Hector Miller and Grant Macdonald. They proposed the visionary idea of establishing a creative institute for the goldsmith's craft. Devlin's initiative also had the additional aspect of managed workshops and facilities for exhibitions, corporate hospitality and catering.

Stuart Devlin, was Postgraduate Programme Director at the Goldsmiths' Centre, and while there passed on his inspiration, skills and ethic to enrich the way people live and work. The torch for the 2012 London Olympics was designed as a tribute to Stuart Devlin's retro style and British craftsmanship by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby and won the Design Museum's Design of the Year Award.

In 2011 his wife Carole and sister-in-law Victoria Kate Simkin started to assemble his archive. It became the basis for a book which was published in 2018 shortly before Stuart Devlin died.
Stuart Devlin: Designer Goldsmith Silversmith, published by ACC Art Books Ltd, 2018.