RICHARD EDEN: Why Princess Margaret’s grandson Sam Chatto, 27, was the only young royal invited to the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace

The royal family is looking more thin than slimmed down this week, following the horse accident that left Princess Anne in hospital.

But never underestimate ‘The Firm’.

I can tell you that it has managed to secure a very suitable newcomer for Tuesday evening’s State Banquet, held in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace in honor of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan.

Although both Anne and the Princess of Wales were inevitably absent, a 27-year-old ceramicist was among the 170 guests who joined the King and Queen – not your average ceramicist, but someone who had only last year completed an apprenticeship as ‘porcelain master’ Yagi Akira in Japan and who is also a second cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth.

I am of course referring to Sam Chatto, the eldest of the two sons born to Princess Margaret’s daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, after her marriage to actor and artist Daniel Chatto.

Sam pictured with his parents Daniel and Lady Sarah Chatto (right)

While his younger brother, Arthur, 25, who is blessed with the strength of the family, is an officer in the Royal Marines, Sam has inherited the artistic DNA of his father and mother, who trained at Camberwell School of Art and regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy. Summer exhibition.

Sam’s talents are probably more similar to those of his uncle David, now Lord Snowdon.

After graduating in art history from Edinburgh, Sam spent three months in the commercial art market – an experience which, he said, left him ‘completely uninspired’, prompting him to build a wood-fired oven in his garden in Sussex and his try out your own art. hand like a potter.

It turned out to be his calling and led to an internship in Japan last year, where he learned strictly traditional Japanese techniques that were often completely opposite to the techniques he had previously mastered at home.

Some of his porcelain is part of an ongoing exhibition in Somerset organized by Hauser & Wirth, the Swiss art gallery of which Sam’s great-nephew, Princess Eugenie, is deputy director.

Sam considers the tea set to be ‘the perfect combination of form and function’, so I hope he got around to it on Tuesday night.

There was no tea – just Scottish langoustines, Cornish turbot and Bombe Glacé Melba, all mellowed with English sparkling wine from Coates and Seely in Hampshire, a New Zealand chardonnay, and, from France, a burgundy and a dash of Laurent Perrier champagne .