Handcrafted Thistle Glass & Pewter Hip Flask

A E Williams (Est 1779) Ltd is one of Britain's oldest pewter makers, still run by the family that founded it nearly 250 years ago. 

The story began when Thomas Williams started a small workshop making flatware and dishes from his home on the Welsh border, and from there the craft passed down through eight generations of the same family, all the way to Rebecca Johnson, who joined the business in 2015. 

Today we're based at our workshop in Digbeth, Birmingham, where we've been since the early 1970s.

We work from a collection of over 1,500 antique bronze moulds, some of which are centuries old. Many were made by hand long before machine tooling existed, and we still use them today, alongside moulds and skills of our own, to produce pieces with the kind of character that mass production simply can't replicate.

At A E Williams, the materials we work with have been chosen over nearly 250 years of making things properly. Pewter sits at the heart of everything we do, but we also work with slate, glass, leather, and wood — each selected because it brings something the others can't: a different feel, a different occasion, a different kind of beauty.

Whatever you're looking for, every material we use is chosen to last, and to look better for it.