featured image

The Royal Touch

By Agatha Zarzycki

11 Months Ago

Reflecting “a commitment to the highest standards of service, quality, excellence and craftsmanship,” the Royal Warrant is one of the highest endorsements a business can boast. Today, there are some 800 Royal Warrant holders, across myriad trades and industries. We asked seven of them to share their stories on what it takes to be a Royal Warrant holder…

 

In a modern world of celebrity and influencer endorsements, there is arguably one that still trumps all others: the Royal Warrant. The granting of an English monarch’s royal seal of approval dates back to 1155 – when King Henry II granted the Weavers’ Company (makers of clothes and castle hangings) a Royal Charter. The endorsement was formalised by 1476, when Edward IV granted a Royal Warrant to printer, William Caxton; and subsequent monarchs have continued to award Warrants to their favoured suppliers.

Everything from crowns to cutlery have appeared on the sovereigns’ shopping lists over the centuries, but some of the orders have changed over time. Unlike Henry VIII, the present King doesn’t have a supplier of “Swannes and Cranes, price the piece two shillings,” nor we imagine does he give his Purveyor of Fish “£10 a year for ‘entertainment’ plus £22.11s.8d. for losses and necessaries,” as did Elizabeth I. These are perhaps not the strangest of bestowments though, as the 18th century even saw Warrants issued to royal rat-catchers, mole-takers and bug-takers.

In 1840, the creation of the Royal Warrant Holders Association cemented the continued existence of the Royal Warrant as a cherished institution. Under Queen Victoria, nearly 2,000 Royal Warrants were distributed during her 63-year reign, more than double the number today, including Twinings tea merchants and royal grocer Fortnum & Mason, who still hold the seal of approval today. Other companies have had the privilege of displaying the legend for even longer, such as Firmin, the button and insignia maker, and wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd, who both began supplying the Royal Households during the reign of George III. Now, Warrants are fixed for shorter periods of up to five years, and rigorously reviewed the year before expiration, making for greater churn.

Earning such a prestigious position is far from easy. There are around 800 Warrant-holding businesses today, and about five million companies on the total register in the UK, meaning only approximately 0.016 per cent have a Royal Warrant (give or take the small number outside of the UK that also possess one). Businesses must have supplied goods or non-professional services – none of which are provided for free – to the Royal Household for at least five consecutive years, and have suitable sustainability policies and practices before applying, a process that takes approximately nine months. Once this is approved, they receive the right to display the appropriate Royal Arms on their products, packaging, stationery, advertising, premises and vehicles.

The Monarch decides who may grant Warrants, and previous grantors have included the late Queen, Prince Philip and the former Prince of Wales (now King Charles), who, at the moment, is the only grantor. The passing of the late Queen means any Warrants that Her Majesty granted become void, and companies have two years to stop using the Royal Arms, though the current review of Royal Warrants could also see His Majesty choose to keep many of Queen Elizabeth II’s Warrant choices. Though Warrant holders represent a huge cross-section of trade and industry, they all share an unrivalled quality, authenticity, and, in many cases, sense of Britishness, not to mention the art of discretion.

By around 1795, John Hatchard had saved £5, bought a barrow, and started selling books in Piccadilly. It went so well that in 1797, he moved indoors to number 193, and a few years later to no 187, the shop’s present location. A prominent publisher and anti-slavery campaigner, Mr. Hatchard based clientele and stock around the abolitionist movement, and the evangelical wing of the Church of England. Soon Hatchards became a meeting place for the like-minded, and regular customers included politician and philanthropist William Wilberforce and botanist Sir Joseph Banks. In 1845, Mr. Hatchard retired, and his son Thomas took over the shop, which had established an extensive business with the Royal Family (the first sale was to Queen Caroline in 1810, though when Hatchards received its first Warrant remains a mystery; the earliest documentation is from 1840). The pinnacle was fitting out the library at Sandringham, the country retreat of the Royal Family, in the 1890s – there is even a telegram from Buckingham Palace asking for an up-to-date French dictionary to be delivered soonest. Clientele extended to the ruling classes, and stock to the great literature of the nineteenth century, plus classics of Greek and Roman antiquity. Throughout this period, Hatchards was managed by famous bookman Arthur Humphreys, a close friend of Oscar Wilde (the playwright would check his proofs at the table on the ground floor).

The fresh century saw many surprises: Hatchards became a hub for new ‘modernist’ literature (to this day, fans of Virginia Woolf look inside the shop’s windows to emulate Mrs. Dalloway’s stroll through London); at different times, writers Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming and Somerset Maugham all lived in Albany, a set of gorgeous Georgian buildings opposite, and were frequent visitors. During the Second World War, a large bomb exploded just 50 yards away, and, after Great Britain’s victory, Hatchards fought closure until Billy Collins, proprietor of the eponymous publishers, bought the shop, and its managers brought it back to life. Most exciting presently is Hatchards’ rare book department, which includes a signed first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Confidential Clerk from 1954, and a complete set of Churchill, bound in vellum, in its own bookcase.

Its first project began in Murad Khani, a district in Kabul’s Old City known for its traditional earth architecture, bustling bazaar, and previously being one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Afghanistan’s peak-skirted capital. Non-profit organisation Turquoise Mountain and residents laboured hard to change the latter, reviving over 150 of the region’s historical and community buildings, including the Double Column Serai, a trading centre dating back to the nineteenth century, and establishing the Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture.

Founded in 2006 in Scotland by King Charles, it’s no surprise that Turquoise Mountain has won a UNESCO Cultural Heritage Award for its restoration of significant areas and traditional crafts in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Jordan and other heritage-threatened places. What’s more, the charity has launched over 250 businesses, runs primary education programmes in five centres, and has provided healthcare to 165,000 patients. Each year, its family clinic in Kabul tends to 20,000 people alone – 70 per cent of whom are women.

A powerful project from 2023? To help mitigate Afghanistan’s economic crisis since the Taliban’s military takeover in 2021, Turquoise Mountain and its fair-trade partner, Label STEP, have amplified their support for female carpet weavers, distributing ergonomic looms and eyeglasses, as well as carrying out medical check-ups, for almost 5,000 women.

Around the world, the charity has created sustainable jobs for over 10,000 artisans. Many of their masterful makings – handblown Herati glasses, gold lotus flowers, Qat paintings, mosaic tables – are produced for international clients such as British jewellery designer Pippa Small, and can be experienced at exhibitions in museums and cultural centres, from Buckingham Palace to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. So far, the Royal Warrant holder has sold and supported 19 million dollars’ worth of timeless crafts, and, perhaps even more importantly, helped reignite a sense of pride and purpose in the communities that need this most.

 

When hosier Reginald Turnbull and salesman Earnest Asser opened their eponymous shop in St James’s in 1885, providing gentlemen with sports and leisurewear (and, not long after, everyday staples and dress attire), it turned out to be but a humble beginning. During the war years, Turnbull & Asser took to creating garments for soldiers, from leather flying jackets to ground sheets. The most memorable was Sir Winston Churchill’s Siren Suit: a zip-up one-piece that could be thrown over pyjamas should the air-raid sirens go off in the middle of the night.

Then came the sixties, when Turnbull’s colourful and bold designs, including its invention of the (much wider) kipper tie, reflected the era’s new freedom. Though it was the seventies and eighties when Turnbull found its niche as the shop to frequent for shirts and ties (its first Royal Warrant was granted in 1980). Over the years, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, and Elizabeth Taylor were all customers, as was President Reagan and designers such as Alexander McQueen.

Its more recent highlights? The 2011 opening of its store in New York City, making scrubs for the NHS during lockdown – King Charles and the Queen Consort even came in afterwards to thank staff personally – and crafting Daniel Craig’s shirts for his role as 007 in Casino Royale (a tradition that started in 1962 with Dr. No). To this day, the shop continues to manufacture its shirts, ties, and nightwear in its own workrooms in Gloucester, and its bespoke shirt process has not altered either, going from the measurer to pattern maker and cutter, and then inside the sewing room, where specialists in collar, cuff, body, button and button holing take over before the finished piece heads to quality control, and finally to the pressers and folders. The entire process takes approximately six weeks, and the remarkable result sees unique details such as a floating (rather than fused) collar lining, mother of pearl buttons, and exclusive, sustainable fabrics designed in-house and woven especially for the brand.

It opened in 1845 as Lochnagar Distillery, named after the nearby Munro in the Cairngorms that neighbour His Majesty’s Balmoral Estate. In autumn of 1848, the “Royal” addition to its name followed after a visit from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Ever since, the distillery has been no stranger to Royal guests. King Charles (then Prince) has visited on three occasions: to mark the 150th anniversary of the distillery in 1995, and again in 1998 to mark Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s visit. In 2018, King Charles was presented with his own single cask (a gift from three decades prior).

Then in 2021 came the ultimate cause for celebration: the granting of a Royal Warrant. The distillery commissioned artist Thomas Oates, son of a senior carriage restorer, whose family has worked for generations at The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, to hand paint the Scottish Royal Arms in full heraldic colours on the first cask filled after receiving the news. This cask is now on display as it matures, but the steps to get here are no mean feat.

First, malted barley and crystal-clear water from the nearby Scarnock springs are combined, then a team of six skilled operators get to (manual) work, running a long fermentation and slow distillation process to achieve the finest quality of the spirit, which is then usually matured in European oak casks on site. The distillery itself, which has earned the Green Tourism Gold Award, retains a traditional appearance, including pagoda kiln heads, first invented around the 1890s to improve air draught. The result? A delicate and golden Highland Single Malt that’s full of flavour. The most sought-after, Royal Lochnagar 1981, has aromas of honeysuckle, rose and bramble, a smooth and creamy texture, and an overall sweet taste that’s slightly waxy, with an intensely oaky and spicy start. It’s so impressive that it’s amongst eight whiskies in the most recent instalment of the Prima & Ultima series, Diageo’s annual release of whiskies that are either the first or last of their kind.

 

A diamond tiara for the Duchess of Devonshire, Evelyn Cavendish, in 1893; a gold, jewelled casket for Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German emperor and King of Prussia, in 1907; and a gold and diamond-set crown for King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho in 1972 – this is but a short list of significant pieces commissioned to Bentley & Skinner. More recently, British artist Damien Hirst even asked the Royal Warrant holder to create his diamond-dusted cast of an eighteenth-century human skull, which is titled For the Love of God.

To achieve next-level precision, the process involved a laser welding machine, a rarity for the Royal jeweller, whose expert goldsmiths customarily use the same inimitable tools and techniques applied a century ago. Back then, the company lived as two separate entities: Skinner & Co, born in 1881 (tiaras off to them for supplying beautiful bijoux to Queen Victoria’s household), and Bentley & Co, pioneered in 1934 and overseen by John Sheldon, a fine gemstone collector of Russian descent and the late uncle of Bentley & Skinner’s present managing director, Mark Evans. The two businesses joined forces in 1998, before which time Skinner & Co held its Warrant without interruption since its first appointment to King Edward VII.

Today, the shop, an exemplar of Edwardian elegance and one of the last in Mayfair to have in-house workshops, carries pieces dating back to the Hellenistic period through to the post-war era, including gold earrings created circa 300 BC in Eastern Greece (possibly Kyme, Aeolis), and a gold-mounted, guilloché-patterned, enamelled desk clock from Russia’s celebrated jewellery house, Fabergé, in St. Petersburg, from approximately 1900.

Fabergé is one of Bentley & Skinner’s specialisations, alongside silver and fine antique jewels – the shop even features arguably the most significant nineteenth century Egyptian Revival jewel: a pharaoh portrait brooch from around 1870. Its signature piece, though, is its bespoke solid gold signet ring, which is die-stamped (meaning sheets of gold are pressed into a mould using a hammer) and hand forged – a synonym for traditional goldsmithing of the highest quality.

Functional pieces of art: this is the best way to describe the bespoke shotguns and rifles of Holland & Holland, founded in 1835 by tobacconist and shooting competitor, Harris Holland, who, in the 1860s, brought on board his nephew and gifted gunmaker, Henry Holland. The manufacture is fabled as being one of the most innovative, and its 51 patents are still in use today, including the Rolls-Royce of shotgun mechanics: the hand-detachable sidelock ejector.

Stemming from the sport and aristocratic pastime of driven game shooting, its double rifles come in all calibres between .22 centrefire and .700 Nitro Express, the largest available internationally to a non-military individual, and handle everything from small deer on the continent to hippos in Africa. Though it’s not just faultless function, but an heirloomesque artistry that keeps customers returning. Unlike an off-the-shelf production shotgun or rifle, Holland & Holland tailors each detail to the individual. The personalised journey begins with a consultation at one of the business’ three gunrooms, then an invitation to the shooting grounds – set over 120 acres – for a fitting by world-class instructors, who have pioneered techniques from knowledge passed down over the last 130 or so years, making Holland & Holland’s art of shooting akin to Roger Federer with a tennis racquet.

These specifications go to the factory, which the customer also visits to discuss engraving patterns – the longest time spent on engraving has been 1,200 hours – and choose the grade quality of Circassian walnut wood, as well as parts for their stock shape. Though engineering excellence from modern technology is integrated, rifles are still built using similar techniques from over 100 years ago, and around ten people are needed to craft just one. Most memorable milestones? The granting of a Royal Warrant in 1963 and 1995 (the first was from the King of Italy in 1883), and the release of Holland & Holland’s first new gun in two decades, the ‘Noble’ Over & Under, this year.

 

In September of 1993, Andrew Ormrod took his Pyrenean mountain dog for a walk in Knaresborough when he came across a garage. On top of its roof, there was a car dealership flag, ripped to bits. He was unemployed, had young children and an interest in geography, and wondered, could he and his (then) wife make flags that would outlast this one?

Soon their work began, including hours of research (without the internet) into the qualities and techniques that make flags endure extreme heat, cold, and wind. The answer was woven polyester used by the Ministry of Defence, then buying samples – and improving on them – from competitors. One big surprise? Four out of the six flag makers in the country were in the same area, but this didn’t stop the couple, who, by January 1994, opened Flying Colours Flagmakers, working long hours from a converted bedroom.

Now, Andrew and his current wife, Jules, employ a team of seventeen, including three of their children. Each year, they make thousands of flags, some of which have made appearances in TV series and films, and weathered extreme climates in the most remote places, including Everest and the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean – the Royal Warrant holder has even worked with space agencies.

Flags are either handsewn or printed using a Japanese Mimaki printer, the latter of which requires putting fabric through a heat fixer that reaches around 200 degrees Celsius, so the colours come out exceptionally vibrant. For both, the most complex process is bleeding through the designs to the reverse side of the fabric. Making one flag can take up to 50 hours, the time dedicated to the Royal Standard, the flag that represents the Sovereign. On the subject of royalty, the business received its Royal Warrant in 2000. Another big moment? A request from Sir Elton John, who was preparing to perform at the Great Yorkshire Showground in 2012, for a Jolly Roger pirate flag, which was delivered in less than two hours!