Dorset<\/a>, bears all the quirks expected of somewhere making such an unusual product.<\/p>\nUpstairs, customer service staff speak multiple languages to engage with customers from its 10 international websites. Downstairs, a mesmerising showroom of lava lamps of different colours and designs enraptures anyone who enters.<\/p>\n
Adjacent to that is where the magic happens, where the bottles are filled and the lava lamps are assembled \u2013 sometimes even personalised \u2013 and boxed, ready to be shipped in time for Christmas.<\/p>\n
Mathmos\u2019s director, Cressida Granger, holds an uncapped lava lamp bottle containing a coloured wax and water-based liquid mixture at the factory. Photograph: Peter Flude\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
The original model, the Astro with the classic lava lamp shape, is still the bestseller but others such as the rocket-shaped 90s Telstar are popular, and a number of newer models including ones lit by candles have also proved a success.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose it is unusual to have a job that no one else really has in Europe,\u201d says Alan Staton, the only person outside China who spends his working day putting the lava into the lamps.<\/p>\n
The \u201clava\u201d is essentially a type of brightly coloured wax suspended in water, which is heated by a bulb and rises to the top, falling again when it cools, creating its characteristic hypnotic effect.<\/p>\n
Customers who bought a Mathmos lamp anytime in the last 30 years will have a product that was filled by Staton.<\/p>\n
His younger colleague Henry Currer has only worked at the factory for a few months \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m getting my head round it I think!\u201d \u2013 having come from running a bronze casting factory in Birmingham. \u201cWhat enticed me to it is that it\u2019s a British heritage brand, something that\u2019s made here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery other lava lamp\u2019s made in China,\u201d says Granger. There have been periods where innovative products were copied which devastated sales, and the small company did not have the funds for legal action. But Granger has a philosophical view: \u201cIf you\u2019re not being copied you\u2019re not doing anything successful.<\/p>\n
Lava lamps on display at the Mathmos factory. Photograph: Peter Flude\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a silicon ball that squeezed on and off, called Bubble, that got copied by Target in America. You can\u2019t do a lot against Target.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut actually I spent a long time looking for the new lava lamp,\u201d she says, \u201cbefore I realised that the new lava lamp was the lava lamp.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company has collaborated with various designers and artists, including the photographer Rankin, the band Duran Duran and the dutch designer Sabine Marcelis.<\/p>\n
Every one of these has sold out within hours, including most recently a limited edition red Rolling Stones collaboration, for which only 1,000 were made, which led to a huge queue at the band\u2019s Carnaby Street store on the day it was released in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were going for more money than people bought them for during the time we were selling them,\u201d says Granger.<\/p>\n
Perhaps surprisingly, Mathmos\u2019s customers are not one-offs. \u201cThey\u2019ve often got more than one and they often gift them. We\u2019ve got quite a big collecting community and they\u2019re quite active. We do have some collectors who\u2019ve got hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says: \u201cIt\u2019s like a vinyl record, you have to take it out of its sleeve and there\u2019s a ceremony to it, which is kind of nice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Depending on your age, you may remember them from Doctor Who and The Prisoner in the 1960s, or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-334686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}