Events

The #Greatbodgingrace Has Begun!

Following hot on the heels of Design Ireland, our illustrious bodgers return to Heal’s for the next installment of the Great Heal’s Bodging Race. Chris Eckersley’s band of designers and crafters – including Sarah Kay, William Warren, Carl Clerkin and Gitta Gschwendtner – will take over the store’s front window for a week from 30 March until 3 April. Bodging is a hands-on craft that utilises unseasoned wood and traditional Windsor chair making techniques to create unique, one-off designs. Over the week, the bodgers will race to design and produce a piece of furniture, the twist this time being that they can make anything but a chair. Bodgers this year will be inviting their friends and fellow craftsmen to help out in store, including Anne Marie O’Sulliavan, Jeremy And Carla Bonner, Joe Eckersley and Rachael South demonstrating crafts such as basket weaving, caning, leather works and gilding. “After the success of last year’s event, the Bodging Project is delighted to be invited back to Heal’s for their Modern Craft Market 2016. This year we aim to be bigger and better, and will be bringing with us some old friends from the world of hand-made furniture. We are hoping to make this a spectacular event to delight and entertain Heal’s customers. However, the Bodging Project is not just a demonstration of skill, but an experimental workshop that bridges the gaps between craft and design.” Chris Eckersley, designer

Events

The Great Heal's Bodging Race Is Back!

Now in its second year, to celebrate the launch of the Great Heal's Bodging Race all this week we're catching up with the competitors. Today it's the turn of the bodging project founder Chris Eckersley, a multi-disciplined artist and designer whose ethos of 'quiet design' places emphasis on 'good proportions' to create furniture with longevity. To talk more about the contest and his approach to craft we caught up with the man himself at his studio in 'deepest Herefordshire'. What made you want to become a designer and maker? From a young age I was always drawing and making things. I grew up in Birmingham, which in those days was a place teeming with small factories or back-street workshops, so a huge variety of making was going on all around me. I’ve maybe inherited something from my grandfather and great-grandfather, who were both surveyors, as I’m interested in plans, measurements, relative sizes and the placement of things. Later on I went to art school and studied sculpture, which seemed the obvious thing to do. Why is it important to maintain the craft of bodging? Keeping old crafts alive just for the sake of it is something that’s not very important to me. ‘Bodging Milano’ first started as hands-on research into back-to-basics chair-making - with the results taken to the Milan Furniture Fair thanks to Rory Dodd - but then the project quickly developed into a way of thinking about design through direct making. So it’s thinking-through-making we’re promoting - people don’t always realise this. What role does the craft of a piece play in your design process? Designers are always interested in how their designs will be made or crafted, and so this often leads to an interest in collaborating with makers. Sadly, this doesn’t always work the other way around. How do you think your designs differ to those of the other bodger's? We’re all individuals with different aims and intentions. I’m keen to design useful pieces suitable for production, but I’m not alone in this. On the other hand I very much like what Carl’s doing with his slightly anarchical one-off objects. What impact do you think the time limitations of the Great Heal's Bodging Race the will have on your design? The time limitation is wonderful as it forces you to think and act as quickly as you can, and so these events become sort of brain-storming sessions. Having the other bodger's and also the friends around for comments, mickey-taking, and lively debate is another positive aspect. Do you have any ideas of what you plan to make for the event? Only vague plans at the moment as my thoughts have centred on what we are not making. For this event for the first time we will move away from making chairs and I think that now we have Gitta back with us we’ll be reaffirming her rallying cry of ‘No Wavy Gravy’! Don't miss Chris and the gang making furniture live in our Tottenham Court Road store window all this week and make sure to check out his and fellow bodger Sarah Kay's new Stipo range of furniture designed exclusively for Heal's. Shop Stipo Back to top

Events

Design Ireland Launches At Heal's

We're flying the flag for Irish Design this month by teaming up with the Design & Crafts Council Ireland to curate a season of exclusive events. Part of Heal's Modern Craft Market, this is the first group exhibition of Irish craft at the store since the world famous Kilkenny Design Workshops exhibited in 1967 and 1972. With thousands of designers and makers now living and working in both urban and rural communities across Ireland, this three week event highlights the significant contribution their dedication has brought to both the country's economy and culture. Alongside the market, a series of in store demonstrations and hands-on workshops will give visitors an insight into the processes behind each piece with designers including Adam Frew Ceramics, Bunbury Boards, Superfolk, Joe Hogan, me&him&you, plus many more What's on? Visit today Back to top

Stores

How Bazaar! See Our Display Of Vintage Middle Eastern Rugs

Discover a design bazaar at Heal's Tottenham Court Road store, with our beautiful new display of vintage Middle Eastern rugs. The renowned weavers of the Qashqai and Luri tribes in Western and South Western Iran have been making rugs for thousands of years. Inspired by the rural landscapes, plants and wildlife, designs are never committed to paper but instead passed down through the generations, each weaver adding their own individual touch. Woven on primitive looms, wool is hand-carded and spun with a mixture of natural and synthetic dyes. Each of these rugs is made initially for the use of the family and later sold on, ensuring there is a constant source of vintage pieces. Shop Rugs Shop Rugs Back to top

Events

Curator Hilary Roberts Takes Us Behind Lee Miller's Lens

Model and muse Lee Miller is arguably one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers. Whether photographing Paris’s bohemian arts scene, shooting the latest fashions for Vogue, or documenting the horrors of war, her lens captured the surreal nature found within both everyday life and the most extraordinary of situations. Bringing together a number of iconic and never before seen images, IWM London’s major exhibition Lee Miller: A Woman’s War traces the line between Miller’s work as London correspondent for Vogue magazine during the blitz through to her daring role as a photographer at some of the most decisive moments towards the close of the Second World War. To learn more about the exhibition, we met with exhibition curator Hilary Roberts to discuss Lee Miller’s legacy and the evolving vision of women’s roles and lives in Britain and Europe she captured. Image above: Lee Miller in steel helmet specially designed for using a camera, Normandy, France 1944 by unknown photographer Photographer Unknown © The Penrose Collection, England 2015. All rights reserved. What was the impetus for the exhibition? The exhibition is the outcome of an idea developed by myself and Antony Penrose (Lee Miller’s son and founder of the Lee Miller Archives) during a business trip to Jordan five years ago. Although Lee Miller’s achievements as a wartime combat photographer for Vogue magazine had received a lot of attention, her photographs of women in wartime Britain and Europe – which formed the bulk of her output – were barely known. Fire Masks, Downshire Hill, London, England 1941 by Lee Miller © Lee Miller Archives, England 2015. All rights reserved. As one of the few female war correspondents of the time, what do you think Miller’s unique viewpoint brought to the subject? The exhibition examines how Lee Miller documented the evolving experience of women in Britain and Europe during the Second World War. Her photographs capture a process of continuous change and adaptation to wartime demands, but they also reflect Miller’s personal transformation from fashion photographer to front line war correspondent. “Her wartime work reflects her unique insight as a woman... merging the worlds of art, fashion and photojournalism in a single image.” I wanted to explore Lee Miller’s vision of gender and consider to what extent, if any, a war photographer’s gender makes a difference. Her wartime work reflects her unique insight as a woman and a photographer capable of merging the worlds of art, fashion and photojournalism in a single image. How do you think Millers dalliances with surrealist artists and photographers such as Man Ray and Picasso fed back into her work? In 1932, a journalist quoted Lee Miller as saying ‘What you mostly do is absorb the character of the man you’re working with. The personality of the photographer, his approach, is really more important than his technical genius.’ Miller was a lifelong Surrealist who took inspiration from photographers, such as Man Ray and George Hoyningen-Huene, who worked in the fashion industry. We wanted to show how, as a professional photographer, she often reinterpreted photographs by her mentors. Anna Leska, Air Transport Auxilliary, Polish pilot flying a spitfire, White Waltham, Berkshire, England 1942 by Lee Miller © Lee Miller Archives, England 2015. All rights reserved. How has Miller’s photography had an impact on the narrative we place on the Second World War? As a US official war correspondent in Europe, she was the only photographer present at the siege of St Malo, during which she documented the first use of napalm by American forces. Her coverage of events in 1945, which included the liberation of German concentration camps, is vital to our understanding of the horrors of these events. “Her coverage of events in 1945 is vital to our understanding of the horrors of these events.” Say Miller was alive and working today, in what ways do you think the picture she portrays of women’s lives would look similar or different? Today, thanks to social and legislative changes such as the Equal Opportunities Act, women live their lives on far more equal terms than was the case in the Second World War. This includes women in the armed forces – although Britain’s armed forces have yet to decide whether to allow service women to fight in the very front line. Fashions are more individual and casual, with many women wearing jeans every day. Elegance is still important but no longer the only influence. Irmgard Seefried, Opera singer, singing an aria from 'Madame Butterfly', Vienna Opera House, Vienna, Austria 1945 by Lee Miller. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2015. All rights reserved. Lee Miller: A Woman's War runs at IWM London until 24th April 2016. Make sure to enter our competition to win tickets to the exhibition plus a night's stay at the Mondrian London at Sea Containers: Enter Now Back to top

Heritage

Make, Do And Mend: Remembering The Heal's War Effort

To coincide with the new exhibition Lee Miller: A Woman's War, we're looking back to remember the important work of women sewing machinists at Heal's during the Second World War. "A dramatic rise in consumer expenditure was interrupted by the Second World War. Heal's, like so many companies, turned from the manufacture of goods for civilian consumption in peacetime to producing the military equipment needed in a war for Britain's survival," explains Imperial War Museum historian James Taylor. The Workshops on the upper floors were used by machinists for making parachutes for the Ministry of Aircraft Production. By the summer of 1940, space was so tight that the operation spread beyond the workshops into the showrooms, with more sewing machines set up to cope with the demand. Don't forget to enter our competition to win tickets to Lee Miller: A Woman's War at the IWM London plus a night's stay at the Mondrian London at Sea Containers: Enter Now Photographs of women at work in Heal's workshops and showrooms; poster recruiting wartime workers. Further Reading: www.iwm.org.uk Our Heritage Back to top