What does it mean to be a GC&DC ambassador?
The Goldsmiths’ Craft & Design Council Awards is known as ‘the Oscars’ of the jewellery world, and its rigorous prestige has attracted a stellar line-up of ambassadors. I track them down to ask each what the Awards means to them.
By Rachael Taylor
When I was approached to be a Goldsmiths’ Craft & Design Council (GC&DC) ambassador in 2023, alongside jewellery specialist, author and The Goldsmiths’ Company Trade Warden Joanna Hardy, it was – first and foremost – a shock appointment. As a journalist who has built a career in jewellery but never picked up a hammer, was I really qualified?
It was, however, a welcome one. GC&DC consultant Brian Hill’s approach came as my experience of, and admiration for, the Awards had grown deeper, following three years of presenting the ceremony, as well as being a judge. The GC&DC is an organisation that I feel passionately about, as I see it as a protector and ally of the craft that underpins Britain’s jewellery industry. As such, championing it feels effortless and right.
Hardy and I join a select group of respected craftspeople who have been charged with representing and promoting the Council’s work. Our fellow ambassadors are Theo Fennell, Stephen Webster, Brett Payne, Leo de Vroomen, Shaun Leane and Tom Rucker. In a bid to better understand the competition, and my role as an ambassador, I spoke with each of them to learn about their GC&DC journey.
GC&DC ambassador Joanna Hardy (left) and National Association of Jewellers chair Heather Callaway (right) present Jo Boateng with a silver award at the GC&DC Awards 2024.
From hopeful entrant to ambassador
For many, it started with an entry. Payne was a young graduate silversmith in the early 1980s when he entered for the first time. “It was prestigious,” he remembers. “One of the things I really relished was that you didn’t know who your competitors were going to be. You just made the assumption that they were going to be really good, so you had to make sure that you came up with some really good ideas, and you presented them beautifully. It took a lot of work.”
Payne continued to enter regularly and joined the Council in 2004, later becoming its chairman between 2011 and 2013. He was asked to become an ambassador in 2019. During this time, he has also been a judge at the Awards, and feels his own experiences as an entrant shape how he evaluates others’ work. “If you know what it's like to enter – the nervousness – then you take the judging very seriously,” he says.
Leane is another fastidious judge – or as he likes to describe it: “Not pedantic… thorough.” The jeweller first joined the Council in 2008. “I'm one of those judges that annoys all the other judges because I like to read every concept,” says Leane, referring to the written explanation submitted with an entry. “I suppose it’s because I'm traditionally a goldsmith and I come from craft, but I'm also very conceptual.”
Leane was called to be an ambassador in 2018, alongside Stephen Webster; making them the first ever GC&DC ambassadors. “They had recognised the level of my craft, and it was an honour to be asked to be an ambassador, as they are the highest standard of craft and design execution,” says Leane.
GC&DC ambassadors Shaun Leane (centre) and Leo de Vroomen (right) in conversation with EC One managing director and former GC&DC chair Jos Skeates.
Who is chosen?
So how does one become an ambassador and why? As the Council describes it, ambassador membership is given out by invitation only to “specific personalities in the industry whose work, reputation and support would benefit and enhance the standing and status of the Council within the wider community”. For most of us, it starts with a phone call from Hill, who Rucker, a long-time entrant and an ambassador since 2022, describes as “a treasure for the Council”.
Webster knew Hill long before he joined the Council in 2003. “He was my first tutor when I was in art school in 1976,” laughs the jeweller, who started entering the GC&DC Awards two years later as an apprentice. Once he finished his apprenticeship, Webster left the UK for California – an experience that would shape his future GC&DC entries.
“I was quite well rounded anyway, but after I’d done 10 years in the States [I’d improved] because I didn’t have many places to go [to outsource certain skills] so I taught myself,” he says. “When I came back, I wanted to take part in the competition because it felt like something that could show all your skills.”
GC&DC ambassadors Theo Fennell (left) and Stephen Webster.
A celebration of unsung heroes
What unites the ambassadors is a belief that what makes the GC&DC Awards so important is its ability to celebrate all the skills that go into making a piece of jewellery or silverware. So often it can just be the main designer or the brand name that wins kudos at awards.
“It is special because awards are given in categories that don't normally receive awards,” says Payne. “Everybody thinks of it as a glamorous industry where beautiful people wear beautiful things in beautiful surroundings; but the reality of it is, it's little workshops in back streets where people work long hours in not particularly glamorous surroundings. And those individual people are recognised at [the GC&DC] awards… for the brilliance of their craftsmanship and design.”
It was a similar sense of shining a light on unsung heroes that led Fennell, who joined the Council in 2014 and became an ambassador in 2018, to create the Theo Fennell Apprentice and Master Award at the GC&DC Awards.
“I felt that this vital part of the learning process is often undervalued and goes unrewarded,” says Fennell. “The master requires not just the talent to impart great skill and knowledge, but also the patience and enthusiasm to keep the apprentice’s interest piqued through false starts and days when they feel they are getting nowhere. The relationship also needs the master to allow the youngster some creative leeway, and to nurture that and not just produce a robot. It is a relationship that, at its best, produces a great and appreciative craftsperson, and a master delighted at having made such a difference to a young life.”
GC&DC ambassador Tom Rucker collects the Jacques Cartier Memorial Award at the GC&DC Awards in 2020, presented by former Goldsmiths' Company prime warden Timothy Schroder.
Yielding the spotlight
While ambassadors will encourage others to enter, you won’t often see their names up on the boards at the GC&DC ceremony. Payne suggests that it is not always the done thing for Council members to enter – although there is no rule against it.
For Rucker, who continued to enter after joining the Council in 2016, he chose to step back after the GC&DC Awards 2020. It was the first ceremony I presented, and his crowning glory. That night, Rucker won three gold awards, one silver, and the coveted top prize – the Jacques Cartier Memorial Award – for a suite of coloured platinum jewellery.
“I just feel there it is a time in a career where you should leave space to the upcoming generation,” he says. “It doesn't mean that I am not able to win another award; I just decided to step back a little bit from the spotlight.”
GC&DC ambassador Brett Payne in his workshop in Sheffield.
An Awards ceremony for all ages
Despite being involved with the GC&DC for more than four decades – as a sponsor from 1991, a council member from 2000, including a stint as vice-chair, and an ambassador since 2014 – de Vroomen had never entered the competition. The reason was that he tended to work collaboratively with other craftspeople in his workshop. “It was never the work of one person,” he explains.
That changed this year, however, and de Vroomen entered his first piece into the competition, a hinged 18ct gold repoussé bangle set with four Paraiba tourmalines. “I’m now retired and I thought, I’m going to make one more piece and I’m going to do it from the beginning, just to prove to myself that I can actually do it,” says de Vroomen.
And he could - the bangle won a silver award in the Jeweller’s Craft category. It was also a lead-by-example ambassadorial coup from de Vroomen, who showed that glory awaits at the Awards for craftspeople at every stage of their career.
The 18ct gold and Paraiba tourmaline repoussé bangle that won Leo de Vroomen a silver award at the GC&DC Awards 2024.
