In June 1919, the very first issue of Homes & Gardens magazine was published. Priced at just one shilling, it promised to help make homes ‘as comfortable, tasteful and convenient as means will allow.’ 100 years later and the magazine (and newly launched website) is still doing just that.
We’re proud to say we’ve been working with Homes & Gardens since the very beginning. Heal’s advertised in the very first issue of the magazine back in 1919; a deep-dive into the Homes & Gardens archives show the ad was for rush mats, perfect for protecting and decorating the floors of the most stylish homes of the period.
The Homes & Gardens armchair in fuchsia Avila and Marida, £2,424, and footstool in Indigo Avila, £999
Our partnership has grown stronger ever since – a testament to our join values of quality, craftsmanship and innovation - and we continue to advertise in the magazine to this day. To mark this wonderful partnership, Homes & Gardens have created their own Centenary collection using our Designed by You concept.
We gave the editorial team free rein over their designs, allowing them to customise everything from the shape of the arm to the style of the feet. The result was a capsule collection of three designs - a sofa, armchair and footstool – each upholstered in new fabrics from the Homes & Gardens III collection from Baker Lifestyle at GP&J Baker.
The Homes and Gardens velvet sofa featuring indigo Avila, £3,764
The fabrics are classically English but with a fresh modern feel. Simple motifs and striking colours create a fusion of styles, and the bold colours create a real statement. The Homes & Gardens team opted for a classic silhouette for the sofa and armchair; traditional scrolled arms and turned feet are given a modern update with the eye-catching fabric. The footstool pairs beautifully with both and can also be used as an impromptu coffee table.
Find out more about our Designed by You service
We also hosted an exclusive reader event on in May to mark the centenary. We heard tastemakers from the interiors world discuss how style heritage shapes the designs of tomorrow. They shared style notes, design tips, names to know and future forecasts.
The panel, hosted by H&G Editorial Director Sarah Spiteri, included Suzy Hoodless, a celebrated interior designer who runs her own international consultancy, Ann Grafton, Managing Director & Creative Director of GP & J Baker, and Daniel Boden Wilson, retail and marketing expert from Heal's.
The three exclusive designs can be ordered at our Tottenham Court Road store or over the phone on 020 7636 1666.
[ INSPIRATION ]
Behind the design
One of the biggest challenges when updating a home is visualising how new furniture will look in your space. That’s why we’ve transformed an area in our Tottenham Court Road store into our own Heal’s apartment, furnished head to toe with designs from our bestselling Brunel collection.
The immersive space is now open for you to explore and is guaranteed to give you plenty of styling inspiration for your own home. Our Brunel collection was designed with modern living in mind.
City dwellers are increasingly having to squeeze furniture into homes where space is at a premium. Brunel’s multifunctional, compact designs create the illusion of space and help to utilise the room you do have more effectively. The Brunel Lean Mirror, for example, has hidden hanging and storage space behind it while the Brunel Sofa and Armchair manage to provide ample seating while only utilising a small footprint.
We commissioned stylist Diana Civil to transform the space into a cosy, modern apartment. She presented us with a number of inspirational images and illustrations that showcased her vision – earthy tones and large leafy plants offset the light oak our Brunel furniture. The immersive space features a living room, bedroom, study, bathroom and kitchen to provide you with inspiration for every corner of your home.
If you’re stuck for ideas for your home, explore our Home Inspiration section which features ideas for every size, style and budget. You can also explore our most popular collections. As chosen by Heal’s customers, these collections feature some of the world’s most famous design icons as well as pieces created by the very best British design talent.
This International Women's Day, we're celebrating the talented female designers that have shaped and influenced the Heal's collection. We've always been passionate about championing women in design; our Spaces campaign in September last year brought together some of London's most pioneering women to celebrate the creative spaces in which they work, and we recently awarded Eleanor Pritchard our very first Heal's Award for Innovation. Meet some of the hardworking women behind some of our favourite pieces.
Mia Sarosi
Having worked with ceramics for over 15 years, Mia Sarosi is an established collaborator with Heal's Crafted exclusively in porcelain, Mia carefully hand throws and paints each individual piece for a unique finish. Her meticulous approach and eye for detail has won Mia international acclaim, and Heal's is proud to be an exclusive retailer of her beautiful work.
Mia Sarosi
Beatrice Larkin
A young contributor to the world of textiles is contemporary designer Beatrice Larkin. Determined to make a creative impact, she established her label in 2013 upon graduating from the Royal College of Art, with a passion to create design-led textiles for the home. Using inspiration from geometry, Bea pairs linear pattern with soft fabrics to offer an organic, contemporary approach to clean modernist design.
Beatrice Larkin
Eleanor Pritchard
Embracing the characteristics of mid-century design in her work, Eleanor Pritchard has an innovative flair which develops iconic styles for a contemporary audience. Her love of experimenting with colour, pattern and texture, delivers a modern twist to traditional fabric making, as she dares to mix neutral hues with playful pops of colour.
Working alongside well-respected weavers in West Wales, Eleanor strives to create beautiful, high-quality fabrics that enhance the ambience of a room within the home. Eleanor was the recipient of the very first Heal’s Award for Innovation last year.
Eleanor Pritchard
Laurie Maun
One of our most recent recruits is Laurie Maun, a contemporary textile designer based in Hackey. With an obsession for a true handmade process, Laurie focuses on the importance of traditional craft and workmanship within the UK. She has created an exclusive range of cushions and prints for us and decided to explore the use of digitally printed fabrics for her latest collection.
As part of our latest campaign, Designs That Stick, we invited three artists to take over an area of our Tottenham Court Road store. The brief was simple - design a space that features Japanese Washi Tape from Haru. What resulted were three very different installations which were true to each artists' unique design style. We sat down with our three collaborators to ask about their inspiration behind their spaces.
Christine Leech
Christine Leech is an avid crafter who describes herself as an "all-round creative type relishing in a weird patchwork career of author, maker, illustrator and stylist." She is the brains behind the beautiful Instagram account, @sewyeah, which documents her love of crafting and her latest projects.
Your window is an explosion of colour. Do you take the same approach in your own home?
My studio looks just like the Heals window - it’s really colourful and filled with all my craft materials. It even has a polka dot wall and teal green paintwork. The rest of my house is catching up! At the moment the walls are all grey but I’m planning on a spring clean and making everything white to make all my colourful accessories to really pop!
Was there anything particularly challenging about this project?
I found this project really fun to do. It was slightly daunting when I first saw the window and how big it was and I was concerned about how the different areas would tie together. But once I had a plan and had marked out the different areas then the sticking became very calming almost meditative process! I used most of my favourite colours in the confetti and every little rectangle was a joy to place.
What attracts you to the world of crafting?
I love that crafting means I can do so many varied and unusual things - from making tiny felt flowers to covering a shop in confetti! I’ve been making things all my life and to be able to continue to do so and make a living from it is amazing. Crafting enables me to not only have fun making things whenever I feel like it I also meet so many lovely people on the workshops I run. The crafty community is full of lovely souls.
Fiona Grady
Fiona Grady is known for her large scale, colourful artistic works that feature sequences of dispersing geometric shapes. She gave our windows her signature treatment, by cutting pieces of washi tape into triangles and layering them into a geometric pattern.
You have done many beautiful window installations. What is it that you enjoy about this medium?
I've been working with windows for around 3 years using transparent coloured vinyl and for the first time Haru washi tape. I prefer working in public spaces such as windows as everyone can see and enjoy the artworks. The Heal's storefront is a great platform, it's exciting to see my work alongside beautifully designed furniture to create a narrative between the window installation and contemporary design.
Was there anything particularly challenging about this project?
My work is very exacting! To create the symmetrical images it required me and my assistant, Ellie, to mask grids and cut the tape precisely to size testing our mathematical abilities. Usually, I design artworks for white wall gallery spaces or public venues such as cafes it was a fun challenge to think about the artwork in relation to showcasing the Heals products.
Have you ever worked with Washi tape before? Did you find it an easy material to work with?
This is the third time I've worked with Haru washi tape. In summer 2018 I designed an artwork for their headquarters which was a great way to explore their colour palette and learn about the material. Following this, I was commissioned to design an artwork for a family home in West London which was a real pleasure. I think it's a fun and flexible material to work with - what I love about the washi tapes is they are all a little translucent so you can find new colours by layering them so I feel like I'm painting with tapes.
Katy Welsh
Katy Welsh has been a close collaborator with Heal's ever since she designed an exclusive collection of cushions for us back in Summer 2018. She has even decorated our windows before so this time we decided to give her a new challenge - to create a mural on one of our 8-metre interior walls.
What was the inspiration behind your space? We noticed nods to architectural elements, what is it about these that inspire you?
when I was first asked to create a design, the brief was loose and very much open to how I wanted to interpret it. My original idea was to channel cubist still life paintings and create something like a still life that would extend out into the room but as I spoke more with the Heal's Visual Merchandising team, the idea developed into creating something more graphic. I found inspiration on a recent trip to Frankfurt when I saw an amazing installation of giant velvet archways. I also looked at the Hermès installation by Charlotte Macaux Perelman from last year’s Milan Design Festival and the work of Charlotte Taylor as reference points which made me want to start playing with perspective in the work which was something that was new to me. But really architectural elements, especially pillars, have always featured in my work, and it seemed like a great fit since I was working with an interiors brand!
How did you plan your wall art?
Designing my piece was quite hard. I made lots of sketches on the way to my final design. I sent one of these rougher sketches to Kevin and he really liked the quality it had so we tried to keep this original naivety in the work during the installation. Measuring and accuracy do not come very naturally to me so working out how big everything needed to be was a challenge, but we got there!
How does designing for smaller textiles differ from larger areas?
I kept the design process exactly the same for this project as I would for designing a textile. The only difference was thinking about the application - when you design for fabric, you are designing something 2D, but my wall installation came down onto the floor and so it was effectively like designing something 3D. It was definitely the biggest scale I’ve ever worked on too (8m!) and it was quite daunting, but once I had managed to scale everything up that was fine too. It’s really cool to see something you designed on a laptop screen become something so huge in front of your eyes!
Visit our Tottenham Court Road store to see the installations in person until 2nd March 2019.
On a rather grey day in January, we headed to a light and bright studio in the heart of Dalston to shoot our latest campaign - Designs That Stick. We’re showcasing some of Heal’s most iconic pieces that have stood the test of time, both in terms of style and longevity. We teamed up with stylist Jo Bailey and photographer Andrew Boyd, to create a playful and creative campaign using the colourful adhesive tape from Japanese brand, Haru. The tape sticks to any surface, from walls to furniture, helping to inject colour and craft into any space.
We chose six designs to feature as part of the campaign, including our Mistral sofa which has remained a favourite amongst Heal's customers since its launch over a decade ago. Similarly, the Brunel Collection has been lauded for its blending of industrial and Scandi style, making it a versatile range perfect for homes short on space.
Using a mixture of careful planning and trial and error, Jo and her team were able to pull together a series of shots highlighting the impeccable design of our most well-regarded pieces. Take a look below.
Florence Knoll Bassett, design pioneer and the ‘guiding light’ of Knoll, sadly passed away on January 25th 2019 at the age of 101. Her designs for Knoll have been a key part of the Heal’s offering for many years and her influence on the brand's direction is undeniable. In our latest blog we take a look back at the modernist designer’s life and career.
Florence Knoll Bassett is widely regarded to have ‘furnished corporate America’ and played a major role in forging the US mid-century modern aesthetic. Her work still feels current and her groundbreaking approach to “total design” contributes to the interior design principles of today. However, her influence stretches far beyond that of interior design. “I am not a decorator,” she famously told The New York Times in 1964, “the only place I decorate is my own house.”
Known throughout her life by her friends as “Shu,” Florence was born in Michigan in 1917. Having tragically been orphaned at the age of just 12, she decided to attend Kingswood Boarding School for Girls, a decision that would prove pivotal to her future career as a designer.
Florence leading a meeting with the Knoll Planning Unit It was here that she developed a keen interest in architecture. The school itself was designed by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who was quick to recognise Florence’s design capabilities. She became an extended part of the Saarinen family and formed a close friendship with Eero Saarinen who would later to go on to design a collection of ground-breaking furniture for Knoll.
Over the following years, she went on to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Columbia University’s school of architecture and the Architectural Association in London before finishing her degree in architecture at The Armour Institute of Technology. Throughout her travels she built friendships with some of the world’s leading architects, including Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. These early mentors, particularly Mies, and her exposure to these Bauhaus masters largely influenced her future work for Knoll.
In 1941, she moved to New York City with the aim to become an architect. It was here she met Hans Knoll, the third generation of a Stuttgart-based furniture manufacturing family who was beginning to bring European Modernism to a new audience. Florence was working for a design firm that was employed by Hans to drum up business for a new chair. However, Florence’s keen eye for design and connections to talented creatives meant it wasn’t long before she was taking on more responsibility at the business. Before long, the two were business partners, and went on to marry in 1946.
Hans and Florence Knoll. Photo: Johansen Krause Florence was instrumental in Knoll’s aesthetic development and was not only a talented designer but also a natural businesswoman. She conceptualised some of the brand’s most classic designs and also was able to identify key gaps in the market that Knoll was able to capitalise on. She established the Knoll Planning Unit, the business’ interior design service, which went on to set the standard for the mid-century modern interior.
It aimed to assess a client’s needs and patterns of use in order to shape a space, not just to decorate it. This “total design” approach was entirely unique and is widely recognised as ground-breaking. When it came to designing itself, Florence was able to blend the functional values of the Bauhaus movement with her own understanding of modernism. Her table designs for Knoll were oval rather than rectangular, allowing people to interact more freely at a meeting.
Image: Mies Van der Rohe Society
Sadly, tragedy struck Florence for a second time in 1955 when her husband was killed in a car accident. She was left as the sole owner of the business and continued to carry out her pioneering work until 1959 when she sold the company to Art Metal Construction Company. She remained as Knoll’s design director before retiring in 1965.
Even after its sale, Knoll continued to be inspired by her approach to design and rigorous standards. Drawing upon her rich background and natural talent for architecture and design, Florence Knoll Bassett was able to distinguish herself as an influential woman in a male-dominated industry. She will forever remain an icon and pioneer of the design world. And ultimately, the soul of Knoll.
HEAL'S DISCOVERS
HEAL'S DISCOVERS
Ed Heritage
As part of this season’s Heal’s Discovers initiative, we’re delighted to introduce Ed Heritage, an award-winning UK-based designer whose signature style of clean geometry and playful details is reflected in the beautiful lamp he created.
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