The Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers were incorporated by Royal Charter in 1693; the City granted it the status of a Livery Company in 1780. The craft originally associated with the Company, namely the making of gold and silver thread for uniforms or ceremonial clothing, has declined but is still practised. Thus nowadays the Company functions mainly as a charitable body.
The Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers' Company ranks seventy-fourth in the order of precedence of City Livery Companies. Its motto is Amicitiam Trahit Amor, Latin for Love leads to friendship — or, more literally, "love draws friendship," a punning reference to the guild's ancient craft.
The Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers' Company also has an associated Masonic Lodge, consecrated on 29 October 1945, membership of which is open only to Liverymen of the Company, its motto being "The Lodge of Love and Friendship", a play on words of the ancient livery company's motto.
Famous quotes containing the words company, gold, silver and/or drawers:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape,
as pure as a pond in Alaska,
as good as the stem of a green bean
we are born and that ought to be enough....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“I had a little nut-tree, nothing would it bear
But a golden nutmeg and a silver pear;”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. I had a little nut-tree, nothing would it bear (l. 1–2)
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)