author

David M. Mitchell

Best known for richly researched studies of London’s goldsmiths and silversmiths, this historian writes with a close eye for the people behind the trade. His books trace how craft, commerce, and daily life shaped the city from the Elizabethan era into the Stuart period.

1 Audiobook

Advanced Toy Making for Schools

Advanced Toy Making for Schools

by David M. Mitchell

About the author

David M. Mitchell is a historian of silver and the goldsmiths’ trade whose work focuses on early modern London. His books explore the lives, marks, and working world of silversmiths and related craftsmen, connecting individual makers to the wider economic and social history of the city.

His major published works include Silversmiths in Elizabethan and Stuart London: Their Lives and Their Marks (2017) and The Wider Goldsmiths’ Trade in Elizabethan and Stuart London (published in 2024). Publishers describe this research as a close study of the Goldsmiths’ Company and the many allied trades around it, from refining and wiredrawing to watchmaking and banking.

Across both books, Mitchell’s approach is detailed and archival, but the appeal is broader than specialist metalwork history alone. Readers interested in London history, craftsmanship, trade networks, and the growth of early modern urban life will find a writer deeply engaged with how objects and institutions reveal the people behind them.