Forget Sheffield steel, this year's Master Cutler James Tear only has eyes for silver

This year’s Master Cutler has an unexpected response when asked - as he frequently is - ‘how’s the steel industry’?

For James Tear’s shiny metal of choice is not stainless but silver.

His business was established in 1760 to recycle items made from a sandwich of silver and copper, invented in the city by Thomas Boulsover in around 1742 and called Sheffield Plate.

The Sheffield Smelting Co became Thessco which today employs 90 at a large works at Royds Mill on Windsor Street, Attercliffe.

Mr Tear said: “That’s how we got into silver. All that’s happened in the last 260 years is what we do with it.”

As the 382nd Master Cutler he heads up the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, formed in 1624 to ensure quality among makers of items with a cutting edge - which evolved into a world-beating steel industry.

In his year in office he attends hundreds of events all over the country and often encounters the same question.

“People ask how’s the steel industry? There’s an automatic association with Sheffield. I tell them ‘you’ll have to ask someone else’. I’m very grateful for silver, it provides a living to 90 people in Sheffield.”

The old rules on making edges would have prevented Thessco joining the company, he says, except for an ‘association’. It supplied silver to the cutlery trade, including a historic firm today run by his sister Jacqueline: British Silverware.

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Today the Cutlers’ has modernised and welcomes all manufacturers, including digital ones.

Thessco has changed too.