Step into our London workshop, and you’ll encounter something that might take a moment to make sense of. On one bench, an engraver is bent over a piece of silver, moving a tool with the kind of quiet concentration that comes from decades of practice. A few feet away, a 3D printer is building up a form, layer by layer, guided by a digital file that didn’t exist until this morning.
The best craftspeople have always adopted new tools. The question has never been whether to use them, but how. We’ve been using 3D printers for twenty years now, but what’s never changed, across fifty years of making at Grant Macdonald London, is the standard the finished piece must meet. That standard is what governs everything we do.
Why would a silversmith use a 3D printer?
3D printing at Grant Macdonald London isn’t a manufacturing shortcut, and we don’t use it to replace our master craftsmen. What it does is give the design process more transparency.
When a client commissions a complex bespoke piece, for example a centrepiece with sculptural elements that would be difficult to sketch convincingly, a 3D printed prototype allows us to hold something close to the finished object before a single gram of silver is committed to it. We can turn it over, assess the proportions, and suggest changes. The conversation becomes physical, rather than abstract.
We also use 3D printing to make certain forms of geometric precision possible. Repeated patterns, exact symmetry, complex interlocking structures; things that would take an extraordinary amount of time to achieve purely by hand. We aren’t replacing those hand skills - we’re expanding the range of what our workshop can offer. The craft absorbs the technology, rather than the other way round.
Where the human hand takes over
Once a form has been established, the work that follows is entirely human, to ensure we’re still capturing the ‘soul’ of every piece that passes through our workshop.
The techniques used to create raised relief and surface texture in silver, chasing and repoussé, require a craftsperson to work the metal from both sides, coaxing form into the sheet with hammers and punches. It’s slow, physical, and deeply skilled work. No two craftspeople produce exactly the same result, because the hand that holds the hammer is always particular to the people behind it.
Hand-engraving is something else again. Where chasing creates form, engraving creates language. Lettering, crests, decorative motifs, commemorative inscriptions; a master engraver works with gravers that are, in some cases, tools they’ve shaped themselves over years of use. The lines they produce have life them them, the trace of a human decision made in real time. It’s the difference between a signature and a printed name.
Then comes finishing. Polishing, burnishing, the final assessment of a craftsperson who has spent decades learning what each piece needs. Technology handles geometry, but the human hand handles meaning.
What this means for our clients
For anyone commissioning a bespoke piece, the combination of modern prototyping and traditional handcraft offers something genuinely valuable: confidence at every stage of the process.
The prototype stage means there are no surprises. A client can see and feel what they're commissioning before it's made in silver. The handcraft stage means that what's delivered has been touched, judged, and refined by human hands throughout. No two pieces from the workshop are identical, because no two craftspeople are identical. A hallmarked piece from Grant Macdonald London carries both the precision of contemporary design tools and the irreplaceable quality of the made-by-hand. Each is doing something the other can't.
British craft has always done this. It absorbs new tools without losing its character. The printing press didn't end the art of the written word; the power loom didn't kill fine tailoring; and 3D printing hasn't diminished the engraver.
Our workshop looks different in some respects from the workshop of fifty years ago. But the expectation that every piece leaving the bench must be exceptional is exactly the same. If you'd like to see where the process might take your commission, we'd be glad to show you.