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:
“I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best taverns.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We mustn’t touch them yet, but see and see!
And what was green would by and by be gold.
Their name was called the Gold Hesperidee.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“your bare feet on the floors of silence
speak in rhymed stanzas to the furniture,
solemn chests of drawers and heavy chairs
blinking in the sun you have let in!”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)