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:
“Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of Godlike lambs we joy,
I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)