David Mellor (designer)

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David Rogerson Mellor (5 October 1930 – 7 May 2009) was an English designer, maker and retailer known for metalwork, especially cutlery, as well as bus shelters and the UK traffic light system. He was born in Ecclesall, Sheffield, where his father was a toolmaker.

From a young age Mellor studied craft at the Sheffield College of Art and later trained at the Royal College of Art in London. He made his first pieces of metalwork as a child and designed his first cutlery set, Pride, while still a student. He also studied at the British School at Rome.

Back in Sheffield, Mellor set up a workshop making one-off silver pieces. He helped drive new ideas in stainless steel and created Symbol, a high-quality stainless cutlery set produced in the early 1960s, the first of its kind in quantity in Britain. He also redesigned government canteen cutlery, reducing an 11-piece set to five pieces to save money.

Mellor worked with the Abacus Municipal company on street furniture, including public seating, litter bins and bus shelters. About 140,000 of his bus shelters were installed from 1959 onward. In 1965 he was asked to redesign the national traffic light system, a project that produced signals still in use today.

In 1973 Mellor began manufacturing his own cutlery designs. He renovated Broom Hall in Sheffield to house his factory, earning a European Architectural Heritage Award. He introduced new ways of making cutlery, with workers rotating between tasks to improve job satisfaction.

In 1990 Mellor built the Round Building, a purpose-built cutlery factory in Hathersage, using the site of the old gas works. The first David Mellor shop opened in London in 1969, with more shops later in Manchester and London, and a design museum opened in Hathersage in 2006.

Mellor was the youngest Royal Designer for Industry (in 1962, aged 32). He chaired a Design Council inquiry in the early 1980s, was Chairman of the Crafts Council, and a trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum. He received honorary doctorates and was awarded an OBE in 1981 and a CBE in 2001. He retired in 2005.

He was married to writer Fiona MacCarthy, and they had two children: Corin, a designer and Creative Director of David Mellor Design, and Clare, a graphic designer. David Mellor died in 2009 at the age of 78; Fiona MacCarthy died in 2020.