Gerald Benney started his own workshop on graduating from the Royal Colleg of Art in 1955 and by 1957 was already appointed as a consultant designer to Viners of Sheffield, a major producer of base metal hollow ware and flat ware which at its zenith, in the late 1960s, employed over a thousand workers. Benney relies on strong geometric forms which in the 1950s incorporated an increasing use of attenuated shapes and showed some degree of Scandinavian influence. From the early 1960s, there was a return to a more formal, geometric and symmetrical element in his work which has usually been enriched by a textured surface and occasionally, deep, lustrous enamel. His enamel work developed from the experience passed on to him by Berger Beigersen, the master enameller from the now extinct firm of Burch Korrodi of Zurich. He first discovered the appeal of the textured surface in 1956 as a result of a workshop accident and since the 1960s, it has become very much a trademark of his work. It is interesting to compare a Martini jug and six tankards designed by Benney and produced in pewter by Viners in 1958 which also uses a soft textured decoration as its main decorative element, thus illustrating that the craft of silversmithing had a direct and interdependent relationship with his activities as an industrial designer. The value of this relationship has been strongly stressed by his contemporary, Robert Welch who has equally successfully worked in both disciplines throughout his career and wrote in his book Hand and Machine (London 1985) "that each area can enrich each other to very important degree."