Alastair Dalton visits The Drapers Company of London

The Scotsman

Alastair Dalton visits The Drapers Company of London to speak to the first Scottish Master in the history of the organisation

Transcript

00:00I'm Alistair Dalton. I normally cover transport for the Scotsman, but I'm in the city of London today

00:06to tell you about a new Scottish connection to one of the Square Mile's oldest institutions.

00:14I've come to Draper's Hall, which is behind the tree in Blossom behind me, to meet what's believed to be the first

00:21Scot to preside over the company here, who's known as the master and is elected annually.

00:30Now, many people won't be aware of what a livery company is, so what is the Draper's Company?

00:35The Draper's Company started as a guild in the Middle Ages. It started as a trade body,

00:41which was responsible for training people who were going to go on and work in wool and cloth.

00:48Increasingly, we began also to be a philanthropic organisation, sometimes looking after people who

00:54had been drapers, who had fallen on hard times, and then we began to be given legacies by drapers

01:01who asked us to use them to support various charitable purposes. So over time, we have

01:07become primarily a philanthropic organisation. We administer requests, we give grants to various

01:14charities and overwhelmingly we support education. I was the vice-principal at Queen Mary University

01:22of London and that was an institution that was originally established with support from the

01:27company. So in the 19th century, the Draper's Company put some resource capital into setting up

01:35some technical schools in the eastern London. The technical schools, in the fullness of time,

01:40went on to become a large, muscle group, multi-faculty university. There are lots of

01:45activities that are focused outside the company, particularly interacting with all the various

01:51schools, charitable organisations and institutions to which we give funding or for whom we provide

01:57mentors, trustees, governors. So some of it is about making sure that we're doing what they need,

02:04making sure that the impact of our support is real, but also there's an ambassadorial role,

02:11so sometimes it's just this kind of thing, explaining what the company does, but also

02:16there's a lot of things internally, so admitting new members to the company and encouraging them

02:21to become involved and making sure that they all feel that this is an inclusive organisation where

02:25they can make a difference, which is what people set out to do. I also have a personal connection

02:32with the Drapers as the Daltons are believed to be one of two families with the longest association

02:38with the company, stretching back 245 years to 1780, back through eight generations to a William

02:47Edward Dalton, who was a linen draper based rather appropriately, in my case, in Fleet Street.

02:58So we're in the magnificent Drapers Hall, where behind you is one of your latest additions which

03:06illustrates the close links between the Drapers and the monarchy. So this portrait has been with

03:11us for about six months now. It was originally commissioned to mark 50 years of the then Prince

03:17of Wales as membership of the Drapers company, but of course in the period when it was being

03:22produced he then went on to become king, and you may, if you're sharp eyed, see that what's been

03:29added to the portrait on the king's left shoulder is a butterfly, and it's not just any butterfly,

03:36it's a monarch butterfly. So that was Johnny Yew, the artist, acknowledging that something had

03:42changed and it's captured in the painting. The painting came to us, as I say, to celebrate the

03:48Prince of Wales, King's membership of the company, and it was sponsored by a past master called

03:53William Charney, who already knew of the work of Johnny Yew, which I think is extraordinary and

03:59really very striking. It's a very, very fresh approach to portraiture, particularly I think

04:04to royal portraiture, which can sometimes be, you know, quite rigid in its form, whereas this is quite

04:09free and quite expressive, and everybody who comes to the hall definitely wants to see it.

04:14We've had a lot of selfies with that portrait, but we also recognise this broader interest, so for

04:22some months it was in Buckingham Palace over the summer, and I think 500,000 people saw it there.

04:28It was also displayed in Philip Mould's gallery in Pall Mall for some time, and now people can

04:33see it if they come to one of our open house days, which happen in September, and they can

04:38tour all around the hall, including seeing the portrait.

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