CITY AND SUBURBAN
Rupert, Mary and I have a winning wheeze family silver for Number 10
RISTOPHER FILDES CH
Silvery tinkles bring me cheering news — my Downing Street wheeze is working! It began with the menace of plastic cutlery hanging over the Majors and their guests. Their house has no silver of its own, and the Brownlow silver, which Margaret Thatcher borrowed, has to go back to its owners, the National Trust. I was arguing here three weeks ago that, with the bullion price at its lowest for 17 years, now was the time to buy silver for Downing Street. A million pounds would buy 12 tons, and all that remained (I said) was for the Worship- ful Company of Goldsmiths to commission a service and Gerald Ratner to sponsor it. Now I find that it is happening. It began when Sir Nicholas and Lady Henderson came back from his term as ambassador in Washington and she learned of Downing Street's plight. Diplomacy had got Mary Henderson used to the best — the Beres- ford Hope silver in our Warsaw embassy, Georgian silver in Washington, the Wel- lington silver (diplomatically enough) in Paris. She and the banker Rupert Hambro put their heads together and formed the Silver Trust, to commission a complete modern silver service for Downing Street. Gerald Benney, the silversmith, is advis- ing, so are the Goldsmiths, and so is the man most directly affected — Downing Street's head butler. Jocelyn Stevens of the Royal College of Art now chairs the trust and is arranging a plate competition — he wants (and what he wants, he gets) 72 sponsors to commission 72 different plates from young silversmiths. It will, as Lady Henderson says, show the world that fine British silver and its patrons did not go out with the 18th century. I wish I could say that it was all my idea. No doubt, over time, I shall.
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