The Great Twelve, as the oldest of the City Livery Companies are
known, and probably the next forty companies or so to be founded,
started life as Craft Guilds formed to regulate particular crafts and
trades. They were a cross between employer’s associations and
trading standards officers.
The Guilds strengthened their power and exclusivity by building their
own Halls and wearing ceremonial uniform gowns, the “Livery”. Any
trade or organisation could form a Guild but Companies were and are
regulated by the Court of Aldermen of the City of London.
A Guild cannot call itself a Company until it has received its “Letters
Patent” from that Court. In the next phase, people prominent in
the new industries founded their own Livery Companies mainly for
charitable purposes but also with an eye on enjoying each other’s
company. (It’s called networking now.)
Why Worshipful?
History records no explanation.
The founding fathers of the Guilds presumably thought Company
sounded more important and then searched for an adjective to make
the word seem more than just any old company - like “HRH” even
though royal princes are not abnormally (nor often) high.
There is equally no recorded instance of anyone worshipping the
Furniture Makers, nor indeed any other Worshipful Company. Nor is
our Company knowingly full of Worships.
Why Makers?
The Guilds’ titles described their activities as well as their trade or
craft. Hence the Glass Sellers but the Basketmakers. (Odd fact: we
are one of only three Livery Companies with Makers as a separate
word. Only now have they come together in our internet address!)
We, at no 83 (out of 110 at the last count), are one of the “modern”
Companies which all take “Makers” as embracing every aspect of
their industry.
For us, designers, makers, manufacturers, retailers, specifiers,
furniture journalists and PR people, academics and museum curators
- we are all Furniture Makers.
Why the City of London?
London, the capital, was where it overwhelmingly happened and in
mediaeval times the City was the whole town. The remit of the Court
of Aldermen, the “licensing authority”, did not and does not extend
beyond the City’s boundary so a Livery Company can only be located
within it.
There are Companies in the Livery sense outside London; the Society
of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol and the Company of
Merchant Adventurers of the City of York are two, but they are not
Worshipful.
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