25th April: Replacement Cutlery!
Many years ago when I was first married and we were setting up a home we bought a cutlery set designed by David Mellor, this would have been mid-1970’s. I remember it was quite expensive, and my guess is that it was bought at the Habitat store. Over the years some items have been lost, mainly table forks for some reason, don’t ask me how!
Then I happened to see part of the “Flog-it” programme on TV where the presenter was visiting a cutlery firm and attempting to make a spoon… the firm was David Mellor’s and it was the same design. No wonder their stuff is relatively expensive, it looks to be practically made by hand. I hope in reality the process is more mechanised, else someone has a taxing job making spoons! Incidentally, it turns out that David Mellor designed lots of other things including street furniture, our present day traffic lights for example.
It turns out that I have the Provençal range which was designed in 1975, not long before we bought it, and it is still available for purchase. I ordered the few pieces which I needed to make up the 6 place settings we originally had, and it arrived the next day, beautifully packed. It reminded me of buying something, anything, in a Japanese store and the way it would be packaged. The photo does not really do it justice since I’d already thrown the packaging away once before rescuing it!
I guess sometimes it is worth spending a little more to buy something which is well designed, well presented, and still available nearly 50 years after you first bought it.