1984 Swan Teasmade D01

The Swan D01-P1 was designed by Alan R Birch. He writes:

I designed the D01 for Swan in Birmingam in 1984: I needed the money! As a young and naive design consultant I often agreed to design anything for both the experience and the money. Twenty one years later I’m still designing stuff but recall with very fond memories the time I spent in my studio designing it.

It was intended to have the generic two band radio but it was dropped at the eleventh hour. I came up with the photoframe idea for a presentation to the board the following morning! There are plenty of stories about that too! Happy drinking!

In 1988 Swan and the Teasmade trademark were acquired by Groupe Moulinex (Head Office: La Défense, Paris). Groupe Moulinex later merged with El.Fi (who also own Brandt). In September 2001 Groupe Moulinex filed for bankruptcy protection. In October 2001 the SEB Groupe (Tefal UK Ltd in the UK) bought the Moulinex/Krups side of the business, whilst the Swan side was bought by Littlewoods. Littlewoods then became the sole owners of the Swan brand and the teasmade name.

Part of the tooling and the software which controls the teasmade was owned by its manufacturers, the hitherto unknown (at least among teasmade users) RBC Electronics. RBC Electronics sold around 30,000 teasmades a year until their unfortunate demise, which I believe was due to a factory fire in about 2008.

I am only aware of one recall on this model, in July 2002. Swan identified a possible electrical fault in a small number of units. If you possess a teasmade with a model number 10890 located on the base take it to your nearest Swan service agent for modification. Any teasmade that does not match the picture or does not have the code 10890 on the base is not affected. Your appliance has a 3 digit date code on the base. If this number is 432 or there is no date code, and the base has five drain holes close to the area containing the product number, the appliance is not affected by this recall and is safe to use.