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Table

  • Designer / Maker

    Designed by Ambrose Heal (1872-1959)

    Manufactured by Heal & Son (1810-present)

     

  • Detail

    Oak, with boxwood and ebony inlays

    75.6  × 101.2 cm – maximum width

    English (London), circa 1903

  • Provenance

    Ambrose Heal

  • Exhibited

    Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, 1903

  • Collection

    Los Angeles County Museum of Art

  • Literature

     

     

    The Studio, XXVIII (1903), p. 40

  • Notes

    In the absence of another table of this design, it seems likely that it is the one exhibited in 1903 and admired by The Studio for its ‘admirable craftsmanship’ (op. cit., p. 38).

    Ambrose Heal joined his family’s firm in 1893 and soon began designing simple, sturdy oak furniture that, despite initial internal resistance, became a popular feature at the Tottenham Court Road store. In addition to one-off designs for exhibitions (such as the present table), Heal created ranges of commercial Arts & Crafts furniture aimed at residents of the blossoming ‘Garden Suburbs’, notably those at Letchworth and Hampstead; see Susanna Godden, At the Sign of the Fourposter. A History of Heal’s, London, 1984, ch. 3.