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