Padgett & Braham Ltd

(active 1874 – 2006)

Padgett & Braham Ltd was an important London-based manufacturer, producing and trading silver and gold wares, exquisite cutlery and accessories, and fine objects of vertu. Started as a small business, the company is known to have absorbed several bigger silversmiths, just as renowned and important.

The firm bears the name of its founder, Stanley Padgett (1897 – 1986), and the former manager of the first company, J. Braham Ltd. Stanley Padgett, the hereditary entrepreneur and silver expert, was only 25, when he bought his first business. With a total of four employees (three silversmiths and a polisher), the company started off by manufacturing cigarette cases. It was between the 1930s and 1960s that the company acquired a lot of other manufacturers.

Among the firms absorbed by Padgett & Braham Ltd were the skilful, long-established silversmiths Wakely & Wheeler, talented gilders and platers Pairpoint & Sons, the Flute Makers' Guild and the Birmingham silversmiths W.H. Manton. One of the proudest partnerships established by Padgett & Braham Ltd was adding Monarch Shield Ltd, world famous for having introduced tarnish-free silver protection to the UK. In 1969, Birmingham’s most renowned gold wedding ring specialists, H. Aston Ltd, became proud members of the company.

By 1966, Padgett & Braham Ltd had grown from 4 employees to 70 staff members. Stanley Padgett’s son, John Padgett, followed in his father’s footsteps and maintained the family legacy. During the years of his management, several other important makers, such as Edward Barnard and Sons, joined the company.

In the late 1980s, the now legendary company faced a serious crisis. In the 1980s, Garrards' insignia workshop was taken over. The trade shrank as the demand for commercially produced silver shrank, and the firm eventually closed in 2006.