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Science and Technology GroupClick 
for some reports on past visits
A not to be missed opportunity to visit David Mellor Design and the village of Hathersage.
Just outside Hathersage, a village near Chatsworth in one of the most beautiful areas of Derbyshire, you will find the David Mellor Cutlery Factory, the new Design Museum, the Country Shop and Café – all on the same site. Together they provide a uniquely stimulating and enjoyable day out in the Peak District National Park.
Entry is free. The cost of the coach travel, is £16.
This circular cutlery factory was purpose designed by Sir Michael Hopkins for David Mellor in 1990 and has become one of the iconic works of modern British architecture.
The David Mellor site was formerly the Hathersage village gasworks. The factory was built on the foundations of the old gas cylinder, hence the circular form. Built in local gritstone with spectacular lead roof, this highly functional building is set discreetly in a rural area of outstanding natural beauty.
The Round Building has received numerous architectural and countryside awards, including the BBC Design Prize. The factory is open for viewing and on weekdays visitors are welcome to see David Mellor cutlery being made.
David Mellor CBE, Royal Designer for Industry, is the best known cutlery designer in Britain. Born in Sheffield, historic centre of cutlery making, he trained originally as a silversmith. His modern cutlery has a widespread reputation for its qualities of design and manufacture, and examples are in many international design collections. He has drawn on the old Sheffield traditions of craftsmanship evolving a product altogether of our time.
David Mellor cutlery is manufactured in a unique purpose built factory designed by Sir Michael Hopkins. The circular factory has been described as a minor masterpiece of modern architecture and has received many important architectural and environmental awards.
The factory is usually open for viewing on weekdays and visitors are welcome to see David Mellor cutlery being made.
Our cutlery is made by a small specialist team of highly skilled craftsmen, some of whom have worked for decades with David Mellor, building up an exceptional expertise in metalwork. Though the factory is technologically advanced a high degree of hand finishing is employed to give the cutlery its perfectionist quality.
David Mellor is one of the best known 20th century British designers. The new museum shows the full historic collection of his work and that of his son, Corin Mellor, extending from marvellous examples of Mellor’s handmade silver to the traffic lights we stop at every day.
David Mellor is internationally famous for his cutlery design, from the 1950s to the present. The museum shows exactly why he is so often referred to as ‘the cutlery king’. This wide-ranging exhibition is an eye-opener for anybody with an interest in design.
David Mellor, Royal Designer for Industry, is unusual in this country in combining the activities of hands-on craftsman and designer with those of design entrepreneur. He has operated as designer, manufacturer and retailer, seeing the designer’s function as controlling a product through all stages from concept to customer. He has felt it his mission to improve design standards over a broad spectrum, directly affecting very many people’s lives.
Born in Sheffield in 1930, David Mellor trained originally as a silversmith. His Sheffield background gave him a particular affinity with metalwork. This developed onwards from his early years of making one-off pieces of specially commissioned silver, including table silver for British embassies, to the present relatively large scale operation. David Mellor’s well known ranges of stainless steel and silver cutlery are now manufactured in his own purpose-built factory in Derbyshire.
David Mellor’s concern with design in its broadest sense led to many important government commissions in the 1960s. He redesigned the national traffic light system. Mellor’s design is still in use. He developed a controversial new square post box, and designed minimalist stainless steel cutlery produced in huge quantities for government canteens and NHS hospitals. In 1969 David Mellor opened the first of his shops, in Sloane Square in London. The David Mellor shops were soon internationally recognised and helped to establish new attitudes to retailing, from the point of view both of display and merchandise.
David Mellor’s approach to design has always been to some extent that of a craftsman, in his close involvement in materials and techniques and his insistence on the highest standards of environment and working conditions. All David Mellor buildings have been of special architectural merit.
His original studio-workshop in Sheffield was designed in the 1960s by Patric Guest of Mayorcas & Guest and is now a listed building. In the 1970s David Mellor embarked on the restoration of a historic building, Broom Hall, in central Sheffield. The successful integration of the cutlery workshops received an Architectural Heritage Year Award.
The Round Building, David Mellor’s cutlery factory in the Peak District National Park, was completed in 1990. Mellor collaborated with the architect Sir Michael Hopkins in evolving a design which is highly functional in a rural area of outstanding natural beauty. The Round Building has won numerous architectural awards.
The David Mellor Design Museum at Hathersage, opened in 2006 in another building purpose designed by Michael Hopkins. The David Mellor Design Museum covers the whole broad spectrum of David Mellor’s work from tea spoons to traffic lights over the past half century.
David Mellor retired in 2005 and his designer son Corin Mellor is now Creative Director of the company.
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More information at these links
David Mellor CBE, RDI Biography
The information and pictures above included by kind permission of David Mellor Design
Information at this link Anderton Boat Lift
Opens in new window
Group leaders
Alex Svenson
01977 683 514
07712 649 886
and
Marjorie Smith
01757 268 448
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