Martin Carroll’s day job is monitoring road traffic in the Counties Manukau Police Highway Patrol Unit. But in his own time he disappears into his garage, which he has converted into a silversmith studio. There he produces exquisite items made of pure silver, sometimes with gold inlays — trays, goblets, water jugs or bowls and other commissioned items.
These are not everyday purchases. They are aimed at the high-end gift market, the type of heirloom that is passed down through generations. A simple desk tidy for holding pens and pencils can be worth more than $5000, while one of his trays involves 1.5 kilograms of silver.
“The price depends on the item,” Martin says. “I am selling works of art. A desk tidy involves 2000 hammer blows. Jugs can take 10 weeks to make. It is not a quick process.
“But what you get at the end is three-dimensional art. People will pay $1 million for a painting which is only two-dimensional.”
Martin studied the silversmith trade at the Institute of Art and Design in Kent, England, and in his final year won the UK award for best junior silversmith.
“There is confusion about a silversmith who works on distinctive large items, compared with a goldsmith who does smaller works such as a clock, or a jeweller who makes small items such as bracelets or necklaces,” Martin says.
“At the time jewellery classes were popular,” he says. “But I had shown more of a flair for the large stuff than the small. I went on to do a National Diploma in Silverware.”
Martin comes up with his own design ideas, starting with “rough doodles”.
An item, such as a bowl or a jug, starts out as a piece of silver, a round disc about the size of an old 12-inch LP. He cuts out a disc according to the size of item he is going to make by hammering it with a blocking mallet on a tree stump he acquired from a building site.
Then he beats (or anneals) the silver into shape, checks that the base is true with no wobbles, files off the high spots and polishes the item until it is gleaming.
“My passion is raising something from nothing and ending up with a finished piece that has a wow factor,” he says. “I see the item from a drawing with an idea of what I am going to make. I start hammering it and see it grow into a work of art. It’s amazing.”
“The trade can be fickle, so I moved about working for different craftsmen who taught me the skills I needed. I wanted to get other strings to my bow.”
But, he says, the trade went very quiet. Garrard merged with jewellery firm Asprey in 1998. Cartier stopped putting work out.
“It sent shock waves through the trade and companies started holding on to their work. It was not a good time to start my own business, so I kept it as a hobby.”
He went back to work as a professional lifeguard at Rainham, Kent, for seven years. Then he joined the police and for seven years worked in the Surrey force.
In 2006 he took up an opportunity to emigrate to New Zealand with a contingent of British police officers.
“I brought everything with me, my tools, hammers, silverware with a view to getting into the business here. New Zealand is very arty, they [Kiwis] love their art,” he says. “I did some research and found no-one doing the large [silversmith] work. I felt there was a niche for me.
“I am a British master craftsman, trained by the best. All my tutors had 30-40 years’ experience. I learnt the traditional methods as well as the quick stuff.
“You need to know how to hammer pieces up from nothing and you have to do it by hand.
“For example, if the Rugby World Cup came to me dented I would not be able to repair it using solely mechanical processes. I would have to make a special tool to get the dent out.”
Martin is optimistic that he is on the cusp of a wider southern hemisphere market encompassing Australasia and even Japan.
He works with customers on the design for special commissions which are all sent to the Assay office in Edinburgh, Scotland to be hallmarked.
“For me, the attraction is to be a craftsman. Even today there is a thing about a British craftsman who has learned the traditional skills which have been handed down and used in the silversmith industry for centuries.”
