COMPANY OVERVIEW
Melvill & Moon is South Africa’s ‘retro Safari brand’. We manufacture high end Safari luggage, canvas Seat Covers, Campaign Furniture and Safari accessories.
Everything we make is under our own brand name – apart from the work we are delighted to do for James Purdey & Son , South Audley St, London.
THE ERA THAT INSPIRED US
The great African safaris lasted for one century. From 1836 – 1839 unique conditions and eccentric individuals created a style of adventure that can never exist again. Abundant big game, ungoverned landscapes, a zest for discovery and an appreciation for both hardship and luxury, came together then in vast bush of South-eastern Africa.
The heyday of the great African safari, particularly during the White Mischief / Happy Valley / ’Out of Africa’ Edwardian era, has proved to be a happy hunting ground for Melvill & Moon design and product inspiration. The product inspiration resulted in solid brass zippers and buckles, heavy canvas, wide webbing, vegetable tanned leathers, bridle hide straps: ‘Hardy on the outside, fine on the inside’.
Muthaiga people 1922 / Melvill & Moon people today
Putting ourselves back in ‘East Africa 1922’ we often think of our most dedicated supporters as ‘the Muthaiga people’. If you relate to the passages below then you too are one of them.
In 1913 Berkely Cole founded Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club so he might have a place where his drinks would be properly served. Like the later safaris , Kenya was now beginning to provide a pleasing blend of hardship and luxury, as the Muthaiga offered its croquet course, polo stables, Goanese chef and chauffers. The Muthaiga’s sturdy rooms, ‘non so elaborate as to make a rough-handed hunter pause at its door, nor yet so dowdy as to make a diamond pendant swing ill at ease’, were the refuge after long hunts , lean crops, and strained meetings at the bank. As Beryl Markham remarked, ‘these were the rooms which the people who made the Africa I knew danced and talked and laughed, hour after hour’. Much of the social life also revolved around sport, not only hunting, but also polo and cricket. Golf was less popular, as the rough was thick with ticks, an occasional rhinoceros reduced concentration and one player was mauled by a lion on the fairway.
As the first president of the East Africa Turf Club, Delamere during race week occasionally put aside his holster and outsize size sun helmet for wild white-tie dinners. Lord Delamere and his friends retained the English schoolboy’s taste for smashing things up, whether hurling billiard balls at antelope heads on a club wall, playing rugby in the hotel bar, or shooting out street lamps outside government buildings. He and his companions, however, had little tolerance for another British tradition, closing the bar early, particularly after a long, thirsty day that began with a pre-breakfast, hell-for-leather jackal hunt, and included cricket and cock-fighting. When the manager of the Norfolk sought to end one party, Delamare remarked, ‘Oh, damn the fellow, let’s put him the meat safe’, and acted on the suggestion.
THE ERA THAT INSPIRED US
The great African safaris lasted for one century. From 1836 – 1839 unique conditions and eccentric individuals created a style of adventure that can never exist again. Abundant big game, ungoverned landscapes, a zest for discovery and an appreciation for both hardship and luxury, came together then in vast bush of South-eastern Africa.
The heyday of the great African safari, particularly during the White Mischief / Happy Valley / ’Out of Africa’ Edwardian era, has proved to be a happy hunting ground for Melvill & Moon design and product inspiration. The product inspiration resulted in solid brass zippers and buckles, heavy canvas, wide webbing, vegetable tanned leathers, bridle hide straps: ‘Hardy on the outside, fine on the inside’.
Muthaiga people 1922 / Melvill & Moon people today
Putting ourselves back in ‘East Africa 1922’ we often think of our most dedicated supporters as ‘the Muthaiga people’. If you relate to the passages below then you too are one of them.
In 1913 Berkely Cole founded Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club so he might have a place where his drinks would be properly served. Like the later safaris , Kenya was now beginning to provide a pleasing blend of hardship and luxury, as the Muthaiga offered its croquet course, polo stables, Goanese chef and chauffers. The Muthaiga’s sturdy rooms, ‘non so elaborate as to make a rough-handed hunter pause at its door, nor yet so dowdy as to make a diamond pendant swing ill at ease’, were the refuge after long hunts , lean crops, and strained meetings at the bank. As Beryl Markham remarked, ‘these were the rooms which the people who made the Africa I knew danced and talked and laughed, hour after hour’. Much of the social life also revolved around sport, not only hunting, but also polo and cricket. Golf was less popular, as the rough was thick with ticks, an occasional rhinoceros reduced concentration and one player was mauled by a lion on the fairway.
As the first president of the East Africa Turf Club, Delamere during race week occasionally put aside his holster and outsize size sun helmet for wild white-tie dinners. Lord Delamere and his friends retained the English schoolboy’s taste for smashing things up, whether hurling billiard balls at antelope heads on a club wall, playing rugby in the hotel bar, or shooting out street lamps outside government buildings. He and his companions, however, had little tolerance for another British tradition, closing the bar early, particularly after a long, thirsty day that began with a pre-breakfast, hell-for-leather jackal hunt, and included cricket and cock-fighting. When the manager of the Norfolk sought to end one party, Delamare remarked, ‘Oh, damn the fellow, let’s put him the meat safe’, and acted on the suggestion.