Visiting this weekend? The Textile Fair is taking place from 6 – 8 November

All visitors, including members, must pre-book their tickets.

If you’d like to visit the fair, book your tickets here, there’s an option to purchase for just the Fair, or a Fairs and Gallery ticket to get access to all Compton Verney has to offer.

If you don’t wish to visit the fair, you can purchase a general admission ticket (reduced to £0 for members when you log in), but please note the ground floor galleries are accessible to Fair ticket holders only.

the hart silversmiths
a living tradition

27 June 2015 – 13 September 2015

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

The Hart Silversmiths, A Living Tradition - photo by Jamie Woodley _MG_9319a-Edit

About the
exhibition

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 exhibition told their remarkable story, bringing together historic and contemporary commissions alongside the spectacular drawings which inspired them.

Exhibition organised by Compton Verney in collaboration with, and generously supported by, The University of Warwick and The Hart Silversmiths Trust. Exhibition research enabled with support from The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and conservation with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.