Mathmos is a British company that sells lighting products, most famously the lava lamp invented by its founder Edward Craven Walker. It is headquartered in its factory in Poole, Dorset.
Company history
The Astro lamp, or lava lamp, was invented around 1963 by Edward Craven Walker. He licensed the product to a number of overseas markets whilst continuing to manufacture for the European market himself under the original name of the company, Crestworth. The rights to produce and sell the lamp on the American market were sold to Lava Simplex International, in 1966, and the lamp became an icon of its decade; Haggerty Enterprises now has the rights, in America, but has closed the American factory and now has them made in China.
In Europe Craven-Walker's original lava lamp designs have been in continuous production since the early 1960s and are still made today by Mathmos in Poole, Dorset, UK. The Mathmos lava lamp formula developed initially by Craven-Walker in the 1960s and then improved with his help in the 1990s is still used.
Mathmos' lava lamp sales have been through a number of ups and downs. After selling millions of lamps worldwide in the 1960s and 70s they did not revive until the 1990s. In 1989 Cressida Granger and David Mulley took over the running of Walker's original company, Crestworth, situated in Poole, Dorset, and changed the name to Mathmos in 1992. It now sells both lava lamps and other ambient lighting.
The name comes from the 1968 film Barbarella. Mathmos (or matmos) refers to a seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo.
The 1990s re-launch of the original lava lamps saw sales grow strongly for Mathmos again from 10,000 lamps a year in 1989 to 800,000 lamps a year in 1999. Mathmos won two Queens Awards for Export and a number of other business awards. Edward Craven-Walker remained a consultant and company director at Mathmos until his death in 2000.
Modern Mathmos
Since 1999 under the sole ownership of Cressida Granger, Mathmos has been widening its product range whilst maintaining and building on the classic Mathmos lava lamp range. Mathmos develops new products both in house with the Mathmos Design Studio and with a number of external designers such as Ross Lovegrove and El Ultimo Grito.
New lines include a range of LED colour changing and rechargeable lights, several of which have won design awards. Mathmos has also developed new lighting technologies such as Airswitch technology that enables the user to turn lights on and off and also to dim and brighten them by moving a hand above the lamp.
Mathmos also innovates with its lava lamp range, launching Fireflow, the first tealight-powered lava lamp, in 2009.
Product design awards
"Grito" lamp shade: Red Dot Award 2006
"Airswitch tc" light: Gift Magazine Design Homewares winner 2005.
"Aduki" Design Week commendation 2003
"Tumbler" light: Form 2001 award, Red Dot Award 2002, Design Week commendation 2002
"Fluidium": Design Week finalist best consumer product 2001, FX Magazine finalist best lighting product 2000
"Bubble" Light: Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) 2001, D&AD commendation 2001, Red Dot Award 2001, Light Magazine Decorative Lighting Award 2001
