Heal's (originally Heal & Son) is a British furniture and homeware retail company comprising seven stores, selling a range of furniture, lighting, and home accessories based in London, England. The business was started in 1810 by John Harris Heal, and its headquarters have been located in Tottenham Court Road since 1818. Under Sir Ambrose Heal, the company introduced Arts and Craft style to mechanised furniture production, making it available to the middle classes. In 2001, an official guide to the archive at the Victoria & Albert Museum wrote that for over two centuries, Heal's had been known for promoting modern design and for employing talented young designers. Since 2001, the business has been owned by Wittington Investments, a company owned by the Weston family.
History Early history The original Heal's firm was established in 1810 as a feather-dressing for bed mattresses business at 33 Rathbone Place, London by John Harris Heal after moving from Devon.Alan Crawford, "Heal, Sir Ambrose (1872–1959)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 12 Aug 2007 By 1815, Heal had started selling carpets, and in 1818, the business was moved to 203 Tottenham Court Road, London, to be closer to other furniture businesses. The business has operated from its present site in Tottenham Court Road, moving to no. 196 in 1840, the same year that John Harris Heal Junior, son of the founder of the same name, took charge of the company from his widowed mother, Fanny, who had run the firm after the death of her husband in 1833. Between 1833 and 1844, the company had traded as Fanny Heal & Son, before becoming Heal & Son. During this time the company moved into the manufacturing of bedroom furniture, with the business promoting the Heal Bed. Four years after moving to 196 Tottenham Court Road, Heal's added a steam plant for purifying and dressing feathers. Its first purpose-built store was completed in 1854, then one of the largest in London, and was designed by the architect James Morant Lockyer, who had presented the design to RIBA with a photographic elevation in May 1855. The store was expanded further by purchasing the neighbouring premises at 197 and 198 in 1864. By 1866, Heal's was issuing invitations in Charles Dickens's monthly instalments to visit Heal's to see their furniture displayed in room settings, which would later become a standard for all furniture retailers. John Harris Heal Jnr died in 1876, and the business was run by his brother-in-law, Alfred Brewer, along with John Harris son's, Harris and Ambrose. In 1894, Brewer retired, and Ambrose Senior took over as chairman. Ambrose Senior purchased the British patent rights from John Staple, which improved the support of springs in upholstery, and then set up Staples & Co. as an independent bedding factory using these patents, with his son Harold given control.
The arrival of Sir Ambrose Heal
In 1893, Ambrose Heal Junior joined the family firm. Prior to joining the company firm, Ambrose had trained in fine art at both Marlborough College and the Slade School of Fine Art. He embarked on a two-year apprenticeship with cabinet makers, Plucknett of Warwick, before spending a further six months with furniture retailer Graham and Biddle of Oxford Street. Ambrose designed furniture in the Arts and Crafts style, strongly influenced by Ernest Gimson and Edward Barnsley, but used mechanised production so the style became affordable to the middle classes. The change of style led by Ambrose was different than the company's previous offerings of over ornate furniture and Heal's staff reputedly called it Prison furniture. His first designs were released in the catalogue Plain Oak Furniture in 1898, followed by Simple Bedroom in 1899. The designs were initially built by C.R. Ashbee's Guild and School of Handicraft at Mile End Road, until Heal's established their own cabinet making factory in Albert Mews. The Architectural Review described Heal's furniture as a triumph of craftsmanship. By the end of the nineteenth century it was one of the best-known furniture suppliers in London. Ambrose coined the motto When in doubt, innovate and he commissioned imaginative retailing techniques, such as Gleeson White, the editor of The Studio, the arts and crafts magazine, writing a brochure with illustrations by C. H. B. Quennell called A note on simplicity of design in furniture for bedrooms with special reference to some recently produced by Messrs. Heal & Son to advertise Heal's and its products. The company displayed items of their bedroom furniture at the Paris Exposition of 1900, which was awarded two silver medals, with the same display redisplayed at the 1901 Glasgow Exhibition. Heal's displayed simpler designs for the Letchworth Garden City Cheap Cottages Exhibition in 1905.
In 1905 Ambrose was made joint managing director of the company, with his brother Ralph, the same year that the business was incorporated into a limited company, and in 1906 he joined the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, displaying his company's bedroom furniture named after seaside resorts, with Ambrose introducing the four poster bed logo to the firm. Heal's 1905 catalogue Simple Bedroom stated that they aimed to unite the many good qualities of the past with inexpensiveness', producing furniture that would 'come within the means of the modest man, and yet be well-constructed, simple, convenient and entirely satisfying to the senses. One of Heal's customers was George Bernard Shaw, who used Ambrose's design no. 117 bedstead from the Fine Feathers range. In 1910, Ambrose Heal Senior gave his son, Harold, ownership of Staple & Co.
Ambrose became chairman in 1913 after the death of his father and took over every aspect of the business. Ambrose commissioned his cousin and architect Cecil Claude Brewer in 1914 to design a new store on the central part of the site, which opened in 1917. The new building was colonnaded with large windows to display the company's furniture to passers-by. Heal's signage was designed by Percy Delf Smith, and the Portland stone exterior was decorated with panels advertising bedding, carpets, cabinet makers, and upholsterers created by Joseph Armitage, with the central panel matching the company slogan At the sign of the four poster.
Another feature of Brewer's design was a spiral staircase that is still part of the store to this day, providing access across all the retail floors, and the Mansard Gallery, which opened at the top of the building. A new factory was built on the site of the former farmhouse at the rear of the store in Francis Street.
In 1915, Ambrose became a founding member of the Design and Industries Association, with Heal's becoming a showcase for the designs and work of the organisations members. In the same year, Ambrose and sales manager, Hamilton Temple Smith, patented a unit furniture system design, which along with a plan to use former World War I factories to mass-produce bedroom furniture failed to be commercially successful. Ambrose, who had been influenced by Scandinavian design after Heal's had received a commission from the Hotel Standard in Norrkopping, and in 1923 was captivated by Orrefors display at the Goteburg Exhibition, which he soon introduced to English society. This was soon followed by the introduction of Finnish-designed furniture to England by Heal's, including designs by Alvar Aalto, as well as other Scandinavian designs. However Ambrose did also embrace the Art Deco style, designing several pieces in his Signed Edition Series. During 1927, Heal's was given the Royal Warrant from King George V as Makers of Bedsteads and Bedding. Heal's also operated an antiques section, and to promote the business when sales were down, Ambrose held a Victorian exhibition in the Mansard Gallery in 1931, displaying a collection of mid Victorian oddities. This was very against Heal's own style that moved further towards modernism with designs that made use of tubular steel and laminated woods, and included designs by Mies van der Rohe. It was during 1932 that Anthony Standerwick Heal, son of Ambrose, opened the company's new electrical department, having joined the firm in 1929, after serving an apprenticeship with Gordon Russell.
Due to the financial downturn in the 1930s, Heal's finances were struggling, with staff asked to take a pay cut, and introduced a range of economy furniture, with Ambrose investing in a nationwide promotional campaign called Heal's Economy Furniture for 1932 and All That, that was manufactured for them by Greenings of Oxford. In 1933, Ambrose was knighted, and a year later his youngest son, J. Christopher Heal, joined the firm. He would follow his father in designing both furniture and textiles, and was one of the seven architects at Heal's modernist exhibition Contemporary Furniture by Seven Architects in 1937 (which included the work of Bauhaus Professor Marcel Breuer), and designed a bedroom suite for the Paris Exhibition in the same year. During the same year, the architect Edward Maufe, whose wife Prudence worked for Heal's and was a lover of Ambrose, extended Brewer's frontage to 197-199 Tottenham Court Road, and added a Lenscrete vertical window, inspired by his design for Guildford Cathedral. The previous year had seen Anthony made managing director.
World War II and the 1950s During World War II, Heal's factory workers at first made beds and pillows for the armed forces, before moving to producing parachutes, which would lead to Heal's launching textiles after the war. The production area was so tight that to meet the demand, Heal's expanded production of the parachutes into the showroom space and Heal's created Heal Contracts Ltd in 1944 to manage the contract. In 1941, Heal's started Heal's Wholesale and Export Ltd to export all of Heal's merchandise. The company continued to manufacture furniture during the war, under the British government's Utility controls, but the designs were controlled by the Utility Design Panel, led by Gordon Russell. The company made its first purchase of another firm in 1944, buying the small building and decorating firm of George Coulter.
After the war, Heal's had a significant presence at the Britain Can Make It exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1946, commissioning designers like Alix Stone and pottery firm AE Gray & Co to produce pieces to be displayed. In the same year, Heal's Contracts moved away from war contracts and into the furnishing contracts business. The company backed Clive Latimer and Robin Day's involvement in the 1948 International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where they won first prize for the sole storage unit. During the same year, Tom Worthington took charge of Heal's Wholesale and Export and started to develop the textile side of the business, where Heal's purchased the cloth, selected the designs and then employed printers to produce the finished article. In 1949, the Utility controls were amended so Heal's could design and manufacture their own furniture, but under the rules set out, it had to be sold at a set price and so had to be produced in larger numbers than Heal's would normally have done. Heal's also presented at the 1951 Festival of Britain, with plywood and moulded furniture designs by J. Christopher, several designs from the newly formed textile department and pottery from artists such as Australian contemporaries David Boyd and Hermia Boyd. However, its biggest contribution was manufacturing 900 perforated steel sheet and steel rod stackable chairs by the designer Andrew John Milne that were used as terrace seating. Heal's itself hosted an exhibition, Scandinavian Design for Living in the same year, the first time the term had been used.