David Mellor
David Mellor was one of the most significant British designers of the twentieth century — often called "the cutlery king," though his work ranged well beyond the table.
He designed Britain's national traffic light system, bus shelters, pillar boxes, and street furniture still in use today. But it was cutlery that defined him: considered, functional, quietly radical, and made to a standard few contemporaries could match.
Born in Sheffield in 1930 to a toolmaker father, he trained first at Sheffield College of Art, then the Royal College of Art, then the British School at Rome. His first cutlery — Pride, designed while still a student — remains in production today, seventy years later. A career of that kind of continuity is rare.
What set Mellor apart was not only his eye, but his refusal to separate design from making. He set up silversmithing workshops, rethought traditional cutlery production methods (asking his makers to rotate between tasks rather than specialise, for a sense of ownership over each piece), and eventually commissioned a purpose-built cutlery factory — the Round Building at Hathersage, in the Peak District — designed by Sir Michael Hopkins and opened in 1990.
The factory is circular because it was built on the foundations of the village's disused gas holder, a detail that tells you something about how Mellor thought: working with what was there, rather than against it.
Every piece of David Mellor cutlery still sold today is made at Hathersage. The production process involves a surprisingly high degree of hand-finishing — blades are ground, polished, and balanced by craftspeople who have often worked on the range for decades.
David Mellor passed away in 2009. His son, Corin Mellor, now leads the company as Creative Director, and has extended the range with his own stainless steel tableware and glassware collections — including the Classic glassware range Still Life stocks. The sensibility remains consistent: simple forms, precise proportions, objects made to be used and kept.
Still Life stocks a selection of David Mellor cutlery and glassware, with particular depth in the Provençal range — Mellor's most widely used design, in production since 1975 — and the Classic glassware by his son Corin Mellor.