Be it Aston Martin or the NHS, Vaughtons is a jeweller with an attention to detail like no other
BE it on a car, a lapel, or anywhere else, a badge says a lot; it makes the most of its limited real estate, conveying a big message in a small space.
Take automotive emblems. One glance at the bonnet of a car will tell you who made it, obviously, but there’s often more going on beneath the surface than you might realise. The three-pointed star of Mercedes, for example, represents the use of Daimler engines on land, sea and air, while the wings of an Aston Martin evoke feelings of freedom, speed and soaring above the world.
As coronavirus has gripped the nation, one badge, one logo, has emerged as an uplifting symbol of the pandemic: a simple rainbow, itself a message of peace and hope, together with two short words: thank you. Walk down almost any residential street in the UK and you’ll see this message stuck to doors and windows, as home-schooled children and locked-down parents express their gratitude to NHS staff who have both healed the sick and exposed themselves to the dangers of the virus.
Like many parents, Nick Hobbis had drawn NHS thank-you symbols with his children. But, as the managing director of Vaughtons, a 200-year-old medal and regalia company based in Birmingham, Nick was ideally placed to take the idea further, designing and creating a special badge.
“The schools were obviously closed, we’d done a load of schoolwork at home, and it got to the point where we were pulling our hair out,” Nick says. “We needed a break, and I think it was my son, Alfie, who said, ‘Let’s make a badge. Let’s do an NHS badge and then you can make it for us, dad’. So they both drew a few different designs out, and I took them to work. I was just going to make the kids one each.”
What started as an idea for his children soon snowballed, as the more people Nick spoke to, the more he realised
Vaughtons could produce the badges in big numbers, while also supporting the NHS – as well as his own firm’s staff.
“Everyone was furloughed here; we’d been off for 10 or 12 weeks. People needed to come back to work, and I thought this would be a great opportunity. We could show a thank you to the NHS because of everything that’s been going on, and if we got enough orders we could bring back our staff, and hopefully create more jobs as well. There is no negative.”
The idea has clearly struck a chord, because Vaughtons has received orders for around 19,000 badges, which cost £9.99 each, in just a week and a half. And with all profits donated to NHS charities, the badges represent a very real thank you, as well as a symbolic one.
Vaughtons has a long history of making emblems for car makers, supplying Rolls-Royce with its original red enamel badge, and today producing badges for both Aston Martin and McLaren.
“We are predominantly a bespoke jewel manufacturer, and we make jewels for cars,” Nick explains. “We had supplied Aston Martin on the heritage side for 70 years, but main production, the Gaydon side, approached us back in 2012, and we never looked back. Four or five years ago McLaren started talking to us, and that kicked off early last year with the Speedtail; we’re supplying all its exterior badging, which is usually gold or platinum.”
To describe standards at Vaughtons as exacting is an understatement. Of the 80,000 components the firm sent to Aston Martin last year, not one was rejected. When we inspect a perfect-looking set of Aston wings lying in a box, we’re puzzled as to why these are to be scrapped, seeing no issue with one badge we pick out. Nick, though, points out an almost imperceptible flaw on the top-left of the badge’s right-hand wing, where the metal is marginally too thin.
Producing these wings is no simple process. Nick explains that the badge for an Aston DB11, for example, takes two consecutive blows in a press delivering 350 tonnes, before it is annealed (heated then cooled) to soften it, after which it goes back into the press.
“It gets annealed seven times, and it gets
WE couldn’t head to Birmingham without lending a hand, so asked if we could contribute towards making some NHS badges. Staff had already stamped metal blanks with the rainbow motif and ‘Thank You’ message using 100 tonnes of pressure, but this stage leaves excess metal on the edge of the badge, which needs clipping off.
Inserting the badge into a fly press (above) requires sliding the metal in by feel, before rotating the press’s handle around in one smooth motion, punching out a perfectly formed badge.
Next, the badges are taken upstairs to be polished to perfection and have a pin fusion-welded onto their backs, before heading off to the enamelling workshop, where enamel is inlayed using a syringe. Instead of the vitreous enamel used with Aston Martin emblems, resin enamel is used for NHS badges; the rainbow is more vibrant with this material. Despite taking 19,000 orders in a week and a half, all NHS badges are handmade.
pressed with a total of 14 blows at 350 tones. And that’s all before you get to the enamelling process.”
Enamelling takes place in a building a few yards away, where skilled craftspeople use a fountain-pen nib to lay coloured sand into the badge by hand. Next, the badge is fired in an oven. “Some of the more experienced staff prefer to use a torch and fire it with a naked flame, and you can see the sand turn to glass,” Nick adds.
“Once we’ve gone through that, you have to go through linishing [polishing on a belt sander], because you overfill the enamel, and then you linish material off,” he says. “But there will be repairs to do, because as soon as you linish you get air holes in the enamel, so you have to Dremel things out, refill any holes and then fire it again, linish it again, inspect it again. Enamelling is a dark art. Every enamel needs to be heated to a different temperature and for a different length of time.”
Although he’s the MD of the firm, Nick is clearly a hands-on boss, punching out 2,000 NHS badges in one weekend as Vaughtons fulfils the thousands of orders it has received. “I’ve been running around factories since I was five years old, so I know the ins and outs of the processes. I’ve worked on most of the stations, stamping, clipping, polishing, enamelling, electroplating. At the moment we’re on a skeleton crew, so everyone here is working hard to push the badges through. It’s working really well.”
Back from the enamelling shop into the main factory, we head upstairs and see some of the past work of Vaughtons, with shelf after shelf of metal dies that have been used to stamp out various badges and emblems over the years.
There are Sunbeam Talbot bonnet emblems, pin badges for the British Association of Barbershop Singers, and the ex-mayor of Barnsley’s retirement badge. Vaughtons has made regalia for the King of Swaziland, Bahraini royals and Premier League football clubs, as well as intricate decorative metal parts for ceremonial Scottish sporrans. Around 25,000 dies sit on these shelves, the history of the firm in physical form, with the most eye-catching piece a huge Rolls-Royce die from an old jet-engine stamping. The skills deployed at Vaughtons range from heavy-duty metalwork
(one of the presses can exert 600 tonnes), to the finest jewellery detailing around. The ridges that separate sections of the Aston Martin wings are just 0.7mm high, for example, while tolerances for automotive badges are plus or minus 0.2mm.
Skills are handed down through the generations, and a number of members of the same family are employed by the firm. On the workstation of one silversmith rest engraving tools, worn to a nub as they have been sharpened over the years by an 80-year-old craftsman, who has been with the company for six decades.
Vaughtons clearly has a long tradition, an illustrious client base, and exacting skills. While the NHS badges only constitute a small chapter of the firm’s history, this chapter is clearly one to be proud of.
■ To order an NHS badge, visit
“We could show a thank you to the NHS, and also bring back our staff. There is no negative”
VAUGHTONS was founded in 1819 by Philip Vaughton, but it is his grandson Howard who is credited with putting the company firmly on the map.
A professional footballer, athlete and Olympian, Howard’s firm made medals for the Football League, as MD Nick Hobbis explains: “He played for Aston Villa and England. The Football League needed medals for the team, so he put his hand up. We still make those medals, 130 years later.” Vaughtons also produced the second-ever FA Cup, after the theft of the original in 1895. The replacement was made in silver for £25, and subsequently sold at auction in 2005 for £478,000.
Vaughtons produces medals for the Six Nations rugby and English Premier League, as well golf’s PGA Tour.
The company has similarly strong links to car makers, producing the original red enamel emblems for Rolls-Royce, and making badges for Aston Martin and McLaren today. The company is also in talks with another iconic car maker to supply its badges.