David Mellor (cutler)

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David Mellor, CBE, RDI (born 1930) is one of the best known designers in Britain.^{[citation needed]} Born in Sheffield, he has specialised in metalwork and especially cutlery, to such as extent he is often referred to as ‘the cutlery king’.

Mellor’s father was a tool maker for the Sheffield Twist Drill Company. From the age of eleven David attended the Junior Art Department of Sheffield College of Art, receiving an intensive training in craft skills. He made his first piece of metalwork – a sweet dish – at this early age.

His formative years as a designer coincided with a surge of public enthusiasm for ‘contemporary design’ in the years immediately following the war. He arrived at the Royal College of Art in London in 1950 and was swept into preparations for the 1951 Festival of Britain. David Mellor’s first cutlery ‘Pride’, designed while he was still a student, is now considered a modern classic, included in many international collections of design. He also studied at the British School in Rome.

Returning to Sheffield, Mellor set up a workshop-studio making one-off pieces of specially commissioned silver. He was at the centre of the renaissance of handmade silver in Britain in the 1960s, making magnificent pieces for the new universities and the post-war modern churches as well as for private individuals. His most important work in silver was a complete new collection of modern silver tableware commissioned by the government for British embassies in a drive to give Britain a more forward-looking image. This was described by the Council of Industrial Design as ‘the best of its kind that has been produced in the country for many years’.

Alongside silversmithing Mellor was greatly stimulated by the relatively new design potential of stainless steel and the possibilities it gave him to reach a wider public. His Symbol cutlery, manufactured from 1963 at Walker & Hall’s purpose built modern factory at Bolsover near Sheffield, was the first high quality stainless steel cutlery to be produced in quantity in the UK. David Mellor was subsequently commissioned by the government to redesign standard issue cutlery for canteens, hospitals, prisons and the railways, reducing the traditional 11-piece place set to a minimal 5 pieces and cutting production costs enormously. The basic cutlery was mass-produced in millions. For someone with Mellor’s deep rooted convictions of the importance of design for the community, this proved an extremely satisfying job.

Mellor’s concern with the built environment remained constant. His continuing work for Abacus in the design of street lighting, bus shelters, public seating, litter bins made considerable impact on the street scene, around 140,000 of his bus shelters having been installed since they were first produced in 1959. In 1965 he was commissioned by the Department of the Environment to redesign the national traffic light system as part of a total overhaul of traffic signage. Mellor’s redesigned traffic lights are still in use.

In 1973 David Mellor made the decision to begin manufacturing his own cutlery designs. To house his factory, he renovated a large historic mansion, Broom Hall, in central Sheffield. The building was then derelict. The machines were moved into the extensive Georgian wing. The conversion of the building received a European Architectural Heritage Award. As well as introducing new concepts in cutlery he rethought the traditional methods of production. Whereas workers in the Sheffield cutlery industry have always specialised in a single operation, he introduced a new system whereby his cutlery makers rotate from task to task, increasing job satisfaction through a sense of involvement in the project as a whole.

In 1990 Mellor finally realised a long ambition by commissioning a new purpose-built cutlery factory from his friend the architect Sir Michael Hopkins. This factory, known as The Round Building, was built on the circular foundations of the redundant village gas works at Hathersage in the Peak District National Park, 12 miles from Sheffield. The building has received numerous architectural and environmental awards.

The wisdom of his early decision to concentrate on manufacturing cutlery for a relatively small, high level, design orientated market is clear now that the industry in Sheffield has been decimated by competition from low cost cutlery being made abroad. David Mellor has been able to hold its own by keeping the operation very focused. The largest outlets remain the David Mellor shop in London and the Country Shop in Hathersage, where customers enjoy the increasingly rare experience of buying cutlery where it is actually made.

Though in some ways a loner, rooted in the workshop, David has had a strong sense of social responsibility and from an early age has been respected by his peers. He was the youngest-ever Royal Designer for Industry, elected in 1962 at the age of thirty two. In the early 1980s he chaired the wide-ranging Design Council Committee of Inquiry into standards of design in Consumer Goods in Britain. He has been Chairman of the Crafts Council and a trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum, enjoying the opportunity both these appointments gave him to encourage the great wealth of talent among young British designers and craft practitioners. He has been most influential in teaching by practical example, training numerous apprentices, some of whom have now established successful silver and metalworking workshops of their own.

The recent opening of the David Mellor Design Museum, in a new Michael Hopkins building sited alongside the cutlery factory at Hathersage, allows people to view his 50 year career in true perspective. His true originality as a designer has been the breadth of his activity. He has something of the all-encompassing vision of the great Victorian design philosophers John Ruskin and William Morris.

As Mellor wrote in 1984:

‘For me, in all aspects of my activity – from the architecture of our buildings, the selection of products for my shops, down to the choice of the right rivets for my cutlery – to aim for the highest visual standards has been paramount, and perfecting this skill has been one of the main aims of my life as a designer.’

David Mellor is married to Fiona MacCarthy, the biographer and cultural historian. They have two children, Corin (born 1966), product and interior designer, who is now Creative Director of David Mellor Design and Clare (born 1970), a graphic designer with her own London practise.

[edit] References

• David Mellor master metalworker Published by Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, 1998
• The History of Silver, General Editor Claude Blair, Tiger Books International, 1997 (original 1987),