George James Sowden (born 1942) is a British designer and product developer based in Milan.

Life and career

George Sowden was born in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, England, in 1942. He studied architecture at

Gloucestershire College Gloucestershire College (GC or Gloscol) is a college of further and higher education in the county of Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. It offers a range of education and training programmes, which include: * Apprenticeships and higher appren ...

of Art in the 1960s. In 1970, he moved to

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, where he started working with

Ettore Sottsass Ettore Sottsass (; 14 September 1917 – 31 December 2007) was an Italian architect and product designer. He was known for his designs of furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting, homeware and office supplies. He also worked on numerous buildings an ...

and

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been owned b ...

. In parallel to the industrial design work on early Olivetti computers, he was involved during the 1970s in experimenta
"radical" design projects
which enabled him to become, in 1981, one of the co-founders of the

Memphis Group The Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, was an Italian design and architecture group founded by Ettore Sottsass. It was active from 1980 to 1987. The group designed postmodern furniture, lighting, fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glass and me ...

, the design movement that had a significant impact on design in the eighties. In the same year, 1981, he founded his design studio, SowdenDesign, collaborating with companies such as

, Alessi,

Bodum Bodum, Inc. is a Danish-Swiss kitchenware manufacturer headquartered in Triengen, Switzerland. Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1944 by Peter Bodum, the company was moved to Switzerland in 1978 by his son, Jørgen, who continued to run the c ...

, Guzzini, Lorenz,

Rancilio Rancilio is an espresso machine manufacturer, founded in 1927 by Roberto Rancilio in Parabiago, Italy. Rancilio's earliest machine was 'La Regina' – a vertical boiler machine, similar to the original Bezzera and Victoria Arduino devices ...

Steelcase Steelcase Inc. is an international manufacturer of furniture, casegoods, seating, and storage and partitioning systems for offices, hospitals, classrooms, and residential interiors. It is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. ...

Swatch Swatch is a Swiss watch company founded in 1983 by Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock, and Jacques Müller. It is a subsidiary of The Swatch Group. The Swatch product line was developed as a response to the "quartz crisis" of the 1970s and 1980s, in whic ...

Segis

Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Mem ...

, IPM,

Moulinex Moulinex is a Groupe SEB brand along with Rowenta, Calor, All-Clad, Lagostina, Krups, and Tefal, all household products brands. The company designed and produced the Mouli grater. The company was founded by Jean Mantelet who in 1932 inven ...

Telecom Italia TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.) is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples (with the Telecom Italia Tower), which provides fixed, public and mobile telephony, and DSL data services. It is ...

Tefal Tefal S.A.S. (a portmanteau of TEFlon and ALuminium.) is a French cookware and small appliance manufacturer, owned by Groupe SEB (a global manufacturer of cookware) since 1968. The company is known for creating the non-stick cookware category a ...

and

Pyrex Pyrex (trademarked as ''PYREX'' and ''pyrex'') is a brand introduced by Corning Inc. in 1915, initially for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. It was later expanded in the 1 ...

. In 1991, Sowden received the

Compasso d'Oro The Compasso d'Oro (; ) is an industrial design award originated in Italy in 1954. Initially sponsored by the La Rinascente, a Milanese department store, the award has been organised and managed by the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI ...

Award for design excellence for

, Fax OFX420. Works by Sowden are held by museums such as the

Metropolitan Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

, and Cooper Hewitt in New York,

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...

in Rotterdam, and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

in London.

Notable works

In 2010, Sowden developed the SoftBrew coffee brewing device, which is distributed and sold throughout the world, notably in collaboration with the Danish design company

HAY Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticate ...

References

* Baacke, R.-P., Brandes, U. & Erlhoff, M., ''Design als Gegenstand: der neue Glanz der Dinge'' (Frölich & Kaufmann, Berlin, 1983) * Barbara Radice, ''Memphis: research, experiences, results, failures, and successes of new design'' (Rizzoli, New York, 1984) * Silvia Katz, ''Classic plastics: from bakelite to high-tech : with a collector's guide.'' (Thames and Hudson, London, 1984) *

Andrea Branzi Andrea Branzi (30 November 1938 – 9 October 2023) was an Italian architect, designer, and academic. He was born and raised in Florence, though he lived and worked in Milan for much of his career. He was a professor and chairman of the School ...

, ''The hot house: Italian new wave design'' (Thames and Hudson, London, 1984) *

Penny Sparke Penelope Anne "Penny" Sparke (born 6 November 1948) is a British writer and academic specialising in the history of design. She has been Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London, since 1999, where she is also Director of the ...

, ''Design in Italy: 1870 to the present'' (Abbeville Press, New York, 1988) * M. Collins, A. Papadakēs, ''Post-modern design'' (Rizzoli, New York, 1989) * British Design & Art Direction in collaboration with RotoVision, ''The product book'' (Crans-près-Céligny, Switzerland, 1999) * Fiell, C., Fiell, P., Haag, C., & Safavi, P., ''Designing the 21st century.'' (

Taschen Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt Taschen and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen. History The company began as Tasch ...

, Koln, 2001) *

Peter Zec Peter Zec (born 1956) is a German design consultant as well as author and publisher. Furthermore, he is president (2005–2007) of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid), the global organisation that promotes better d ...

, ''Who's who in design. Vol. 2. '' (AVedition, Stuttgart, 2003) *

Terence Conran Sir Terence Orby Conran (4 October 1931 – 12 September 2020) was a British designer, restaurateur, retailer and writer. He founded the Design Museum in Shad Thames, London in 1989. The British designer Thomas Heatherwick said that Conran "m ...

, Max Fraser, ''Designers on design'' (Conran Octopus, London, 2004) * Fiell, Charlotte, and Peter Fiell., ''1000 Lights. Vol. 2'' (Taschen, Koln, 2005)

External links

Sowden SoftBrew official siteBiography from 'Art and Culture'

Biography on 'Ketterer Kunst Gallery'
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sowden, George 1942 births Living people British industrial designers English expatriates in Italy Compasso d'Oro Award recipients Olivetti people Product designers British lighting designers British furniture designers