Craig and Seeley

Craig and Seeley Limited

Type	Public company
Industry	Household appliance manufacturing
Founded	1952 (1952) in Adelaide
Founder	Howard Seeley AM
Defunct	November 2001 (2001-11)
Fate	Subsidiary
Successors	Vulcan Email Limited Electrolux
Headquarters	Melbourne, Victoria , Australia
Area served	Australia
Key people	Howard Seeley
Products	Gas and electric cooktops
Brands	Chef

Craig and Seeley Limited is a former Australian home appliance manufacturer, that was based in Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia. Established in the 1950s, the company flourished during the post-war years when the popular Chef brand appliances became a household name. The company operated as a subsidiary of Vulcan Industries in the early 1970s, and then Email Limited, before it collapsed in November 2001. The appliance brands of Email were acquired by the Swedish-multinational Electrolux group, including the Chef brand.

The Craig and Seeley offices and showroom were located at 35 Hope Street, Brunswick, an inner northern suburb of Melbourne. Completed in 1962, the building was added to the Victorian Heritage Register on 17 April 2003 in recognition of its architectural, aesthetic and historical significance.

Company history

In 1952, Howard Seeley AM (1930–2017) formed Craig and Seeley as a partnership in Adelaide, and the business was incorporated as a public company the following year. The main business was the manufacture of pre-cast fire-place surrounds and the installation of heating appliances. From 1956 the company represented E.S. & F. Ferrier in South Australia which manufactured Chef cookers at its Lux Foundry in Hope Street, Brunswick. Craig and Seeley expanded its operations and became the South Australian distributors for other appliance manufacturers including Chrysler Airtemp air conditioning units and Pyrox Limited.

Since 1958, the company’s policy had been to design appliances (mostly evaporative coolers and slow combustion heaters) and have them made by outside manufacturers under contract. In May 1962, the Lux Foundry, which had been making cookers for E.S. & F. Ferrier became available and Craig and Seeley acquired its assets, trademarks and goodwill, and started manufacturing and marketing Chef gas cookers, Lux slow combustion cookers, and its own Crestair slow combustion space heater.

Chef cooker sales increased swiftly and the Craig and Seeley company expanded rapidly. The Chef brand became a household name and the company manufactured a range of other products including Gasglo space heaters and central heaters, laundry driers, gas lamps and, at one point, the company was the largest barbecue manufacturer in Australia. At its peak, the Brunswick factory was producing approximately 2,000 Chef cookers per day.

Taken over by Vulcan Industries in 1972, then Email, its appliance brands were acquired by Electrolux. Liquidators voluntarily wound-up various corporate entities in 1985, and the holding company, no longer trading, was deregistered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in 2018.

Heritage-listed building

Craig and Seeley Offices and Showroom
Location within Melbourne
Interactive map of the Craig and Seeley Offices and Showroom area
General information
Status	Completed
Type	Administration office Retail showroom
Architectural style	Modernist
Location	35 Hope Street, Brunswick, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Coordinates	37°45′50″S 144°57′33″E
Completed	1962 (1962)
Inaugurated	4 July 1963 (1963-07-04)
Cost	A£80,000
Technical details
Material	Steel enamelled metal tiles glass
Floor area	1,041 m2 (11,200 sq ft)
Design and construction
Architect	Theodore Berman
Victorian Heritage Register
Official name	Craig & Seeley Offices and Showroom
Type	Registered place
Designated	17 April 2003
Reference no.	H2026
Heritage overlay no.	HO244
Category	Manufacturing and Processing

History

The gas industry first occupied the site in Hope Street, Brunswick, from 1891 when the Brunswick Gas and Coke Company established a gasworks. From 1906 to the late 1950s it was occupied by the Lux Foundry, operated by Sir Robert Gibson, located at 21 Hope Street, which used the surviving gas retort house as its principal building for the manufacture of cast iron stoves. Craig and Seeley began manufacturing their Chef brand cookers on the 21 Hope Street site in the early 1960s.

On an adjacent site, at 35 Hope Street, Craig and Seeley built their new headquarters and showroom. Designed in 1962 by Melbourne architect Theodore Berman, the building projected a Modernist image for a newly-established company on a site long associated with the gas industry and stove manufacturing. On 4 July 1963, Henry Bolte, the Premier of Victoria, officially opened the company's A£80,000 administrative headquarters which covered 1,041 square metres (11,200 sq ft) adjoining the foundry and factory.

Description

The offices feature the company's own factory-made porcelain enamel panels on the Hope and Percy Street facades in a striking display of diamond-pointed rustication. Green panels resembling shallow pyramidal forms stud the wall surface in a pattern that wraps around the corner of the building. A large signboard of red enamel panels is incorporated into the architecture replicating the company's logo, a white Chef running with a steaming dish. The volumetric background of green, the complementary colour of red, highlights the sign to eye-catching advantage, projecting the brand image towards the spectator.

The office and showroom are architecturally and aesthetically important for their boldness, invention and defiance of convention in their external design. The offices have further importance for illustrating the company's innovative venture into fabricating and promoting their porcelain enamel ware for modern architectural application. The building is architectural interest as one of the best examples of the commercial work of Berman, one of Melbourne's earliest and most fluent exponents of the overt vocabulary of commercial vernacular or featurist architecture.

As the former headquarters of Australia's largest cooking appliance manufacturer, the building is associated with the great surge of manufacturing in the post war years and the redevelopment and immigration programmes that sustained this activity. The offices are of historical interest for their association with the gas industry. The site has a long history of association with the industry, first as a gasworks where gas was manufactured, then as a foundry where cast iron stoves were made and more recently as a modern plant for manufacturing gas appliances. The modern offices stand in juxtaposition with the surviving nineteenth century retort house, the two buildings providing a narrative of our changing use of gas and its associated technologies.

The site was subsequently leased as commercial office space.

See also

• Architecture of Melbourne
• List of places on the Victorian Heritage Register in the City of Merri-bek
• Seeley International — manufacturer of air-conditioners and gas heaters, founded by other Seeley brothers

External links

• Ellen, Jane (7 December 2006). Former Lux Foundry, Brunswick (image). Retrieved 17 July 2026 – via Flickr.
• Chef Royal Seal Gas Stoves (advertisement: colour line drawing). Publicity Brochure. Craig & Seeley Ltd. c. 1955. Retrieved 17 July 2026 – via Museums Victoria Collections.
• Sievers, Wolfgang (1981). Stove manufacture, Craig & Seeley, A.C.I, Brunswick, Victoria (colour image of manufacturing operations; negative: 5.5 x 6.8 cm). Wolfgang Sievers photographic archive. Retrieved 21 July 2026 – via Trove. National Library of Australia.
• "Southcorp Whitegoods Limited". Creditor Watch. 2026. Retrieved 17 July 2026.
• "Home page". Chef Appliances. Electrolux. 2026. Retrieved 17 July 2026.