Biography
Born Andrew Douglas Brownsword he trained as a chef, before starting the Andrew Brownsword Collection, a publishing business founded in Bath in 1971. Brownsword started by selling greeting cards to retailers like WH Smith from boxes and the back of his car, before developing the Forever Friends teddy bear genre with artist Deborah Jones in a flat above a Chinese takeaway in Reading in the early 1980s:[1]
"I wanted to develop a teddy bear that appealed to adults as well as children. I based Forever Friends specifically on the teddy bear that Sebastian Flyte carried around in Brideshead Revisited. It became the bear found in the attic."
The success of the greeting cards created a financial income to develop the Andrew Brownsword Group, based on greetings cards and associated gifts that was regarded as an industry pace-setter in design and innovation,[2] with a peak turnover of £250million. The Andrew Brownsword Collection, Andrew Brownsword Gifts and the Gordon Fraser Gallery (the later acquired in 1989),[3] were acquired by Hallmark Cards in 1994 for a estimated £195million.[4] Brownsword became Chief Executive of Hallmark in Europe, a position which he held for four and a half years before leaving to develop other business interests.
Brownsword has used these monies since to develop both his business and charitable interests, buying stakes in: property development (The Bath Priory, Gidleigh Park in Devon, and Sydney House in Chelsea, London); ABode Hotels with chef Michael Caines; buying various businesses including Paxton & Whitfield cheese and Snow and Rock;[5] founding local arts radio station Bath FM with journalist and local resident Jonathan Dimbleby;[6] and buying Bath Rugby.[7]
The Andrew Brownsword Art Foundation is a registered charity which buys and loans works of art to mainly UK based museums.[8] The collection includes works by Thomas Gainsborough.[9]
Personal life
Married to Christina, the couple have two daughters and live in the week in London, and the weekend in their various homes in the West Country.[10] Brownsword enjoys skiing and sailing.
Having become heavily involved in The Prince's Trust, his friends include Prince Charles[11] Brownsword sponsored the £1million development of the markethall at Poundbury, designed by John Simpson and based on early designs, particularly the one in Tetbury.[12]
Brownsword's main second home is in Bath, and he has helped sponsor numerous local charities and organisations: Bath Festival,[13] RUH, Holburne Museum, and Bath Abbey. [14] His renovated holiday home Kittery Court in Kingswear, Devon, was destroyed in a fire caused by a plumber in April 2007.[15]