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:
“A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 15:8.
“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)