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We celebrate the brilliant designs that have
made Joseph Joseph kitchen icons
G
ood design is simple and
transparent. So it’s fitting that the
Joseph Joseph story started with a
glass chopping board.
Twin brothers Richard and Anthony
Joseph founded this design-led English
homeware company in 2003 after their
father asked them to help out at his
glass manufacturing firm. Anthony had
studied design at Central St Martins
while Richard had graduated from
Cambridge with an MA in design
and business. The family firm, set up
by their grandfather, specialised in
toughened glass products. Their father
gave them the company sideline – glass
chopping boards – as a stand-alone part
of the business to run separately with
£10,000 worth of stock. The challenge
was to take the stock, sell it and reinvest
the profits. It was all very Alan Sugar on
The Apprentice.
The success of that functional,
hygienic chopping board set the
brothers on their path; designing
everyday household products but
always looking to make them better.
“Innovation is at the heart of everything
we do at Joseph Joseph, that’s why we
make it our aim to identify everyday
problems and solve them by designing
functional solutions,” said Anthony and
Richard about their success.
When they looked at other kitchen
essentials, they found they weren’t
always performing as well as they
should, and this set their design
objectives for a range of acclaimed
kitchenware that is often as distinctive
looking as it is useful.
Many of their products have become
modern kitchen icons. Their colourful
Nest series of stacking food preparation
sets is beloved by cooks in a hurry and
interiors magazine stylists alike. The
Chop2Pot folding chopping board is
a design classic, providing a chute to
direct chopped food into the pan. The
Elevate range of kitchen tools have a
built in rest to keep the head off of your
worktop. We could go on and will – by
showing you some of their best ideas in
this feature.
The Joseph Joseph brand is growing
to take in other areas of the home
like waste recycling management and
cleaning, and the business is now an
international homeware brand sold
in over 100 countries across the globe.
They employ a large team of designers
to keep the flow of innovative products
coming, as well as people to stop their
ideas being illegally copied by others.
And that simple tempered glass
chopping board? They still make them
in a factory in the Midlands, proving
that when a design is right, you don’t
need to change a thing.
Twin brothers Anthony and Richard Joseph were
fascinated by design from an early age.
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