Past Master awarded OBE

We would like to congratulate liveryman and past master David Dewing for being awarded an OBE for services to the arts in the Queen’s birthday honours.

Master of The Furniture Makers’ Company from 2015-2016, David is a qualified furniture designer and historian, who spent most of his career in museums.  In 1991 he became director of the Geffrye Museum of the Home in east London.

David led the museum through major changes, with an extension completed in 1998, and a series of gallery improvement works. He has been instrumental in planning and fundraising for an £18m development due for completion in 2019, which will provide a new Home Gallery, learning spaces and a library.  He retired from the museum in December 2016.

Educated at Radley College near Oxford, David took a degree in Three-Dimensional Design at Ravensbourne College of Art, in Bromley.  Graduating in 1973, he worked in the furniture design office at Kent County Council for six years before deciding on a career change into museums.

He joined the Museum of London and took a Museums Diploma with Leicester University, then a Master’s Degree in London Studies at Birkbeck College. He is an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London.

Commenting, David said: “I am delighted to have been awarded an OBE and am pleased and proud to accept in recognition of what everyone at the Geffrye Museum has achieved over the years.  It’s a strong dynamic museum with a great future and I’m excited to see the development plans coming to fruition. Now retired, I have the time and opportunity to pursue my wide-ranging interests in furniture history and design and I see this award as an encouragement to share these interests as widely as I can.”