Antique silver — the most interesting small collectibles in London

It is rare to be able to pinpoint the house where a goldsmith was raised, and even rarer for it still to be standing substantially unaltered.  Muselane was the home of Derbyshire farmer John Chawner (1705-1775).

He sent two of his sons to London to be apprenticed as goldsmiths, Thomas  (1734-1803) and William (b.1738), where they prospered and were followed by two of the next generation — Henry (1764-1851) and William II (d.1834). 

This house, therefore, can be seen as the nucleus of a dynasty of goldsmiths that lasted from the 1760s until 1834 and the firms they founded lasted into the twentieth century.

Luke Schrager