Born in Watford, Herefordshire, Mellon attended Watford Technical and Art Institute for a career in the printing industry. Mellon was one of the finest British studio potters of the 20th Century, noted for his figurative work with stoneware.

He was the product of skills-oriented training offered by British Art schools until the early 1960's, the result of this was that he became a versatile and accomplished painter, printmaker and ceramicist. In all disciplines he demonstrated a fascination with the human form, life drawing was central to his learning, his drawings often taking on a mythological dimension.

Two paintings known as the Hat paintings are from a series of paintings where the unnamed sitter was a milliner, ...