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THE INVESTOR
MY MONEY
CHARLES MARSDEN-SMEDLEY
Carriage Museum displaying the Grosvenor
Carriages, designed by Charles for the Duke
of Westminster in a former riding school
Charles welcomes HRH The Princess Royal to
the John Smedley stand at the Coronation
Festival held at Buckingham Palace in 2013
Interior view of
A Life in Uniform,
a military museum
designed by Charles
for the Duke of
Westminster and
due to open in
November 2014
I
n November 2010, Charles Marsden-
Smedley became non-executive
chairman of John Smedley, the oldest
textile manufacturing factory in the
world. Charles has had plenty of
business experience as a designer of museums
and exhibitions, whose clients include Her
MajestyThe Queen and the Dalai Lama. But
this was a very di erent proposition.
The Derbyshire business was going through
a di cult patch and the board, which Charles
had joined in February of 2010, was keen
to have another member of the family
as chairman to work alongside Charles’s
cousin, Ian Maclean, the newly appointed
managing director of the company. However,
it never occurred to Charles that he should be
chairman; and when the discussions began,
he’d actually written a paper explaining why
he felt he shouldn’t be.
Yet when it came to the crunch, sitting
in the boardroom, surrounded by portraits
of his ancestors, he felt he could. He says he
actually felt the sensation of weight pressing
on his shoulders. Since then, he says:‘It’s been
a very steep learning curve because in my
design business I work predominantly on my
When Charles Marsden-Smedley became
non-executive chairman of the 230-year-old family
business – textile manufacturer John Smedley –
he felt the weight of history on his shoulders
By Heather Farmbrough
A DESIGN
FOR LIFE
Charles has been designing museums,
exhibitions, galleries and lighting from
his studio in Covent Garden since 1987.
His work has included designing the
William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain
in 2000, the Museum of Edward I at the
Tower of London and the private
museums for the Duke of Westminster
in Cheshire. His overseas commissions
include exhibitions of Islamic metalwork
and Mughal jewellery for Qatar’s
Department of Fine Arts in Doha. He
designed HRH The Prince of Wales’s
50th birthday exhibition at Hampton
Court and he’s worked in some of the
UK’s most historic houses. However, he
cut his teeth as a designer for Terence
Conran. ‘I went into Habitat on the
King’s Road and saw what I’d designed
on the shop floor,’ he recalls. ‘If you
can’t identify with your audience, you’re
out of touch.’
