Spirit

For more than 50 years, within a few modest rooms in an 18th-century silk mill, a small team of people has created 3,418 new products, leading to sales of more than 46 million items around the world. It is said that appearances can be deceptive and nowhere is this truer than at Chipping Campden, a small market town within the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, western England. Its understated charm is perhaps its greatest attribute, for within its boundaries are the headquarters of Robert Welch Designs, a family-run business with a global reach. The existence of the company at the old mill is the legacy of the man whose name the business carries and it all began in 1955 when, fresh from the Royal College of Art, Robert Welch was looking to set up a studio somewhere between his parents’ home in Malvern and London, where he might find work. He rented a small room in the Old Silk Mill in Chipping Campden and installed his drawing board and a truckle bed. It was an inauspicious start for a man whose strong design principles would later lead to him being appointed a Royal Designer for Industry, and MBE – a Member of the Order of the British Empire, bestowed by the Queen in recognition of his work. Welch trained as a silversmith at Birmingham College of Art before moving to the Royal College of Art in 1952 where he specialised exclusively in stainless steel production design. In 1965 he was honoured as a Royal Designer for Industry by the British Royal Society of Arts. Being an enthusiastic cricketer, he believed in the close working efficiency of small teams, and therefore called on the complementary skills of designers, prototype makers and manufacturers to help realise his designs. Unlike other design companies, none […]