Words: Cross Nelson
We are saddened to learn of the death of Oliver Heal, the last member of the Heal family to serve as Chairman of the company. The Heal name was something of great importance to Oliver, and not only did he work at Heal’s in his early life, but he devoted the last decades of his life to preserving the family’s legacy.
Oliver began working at Heal’s in 1971 in the bedding department, and after working his way through the ranks, eventually succeeded his father Anthony as Chairman from 1981 - 1983, making him the fifth generation at the helm of the company. Once he departed Heal’s, Oliver left England and worked for several furnishing fabric brands in Germany and France throughout the 80s and 90s.
In the year 2000, he returned to England with his family and moved into Baylins Farm, the Heal family home in Buckinghamshire. This historic home came into the family in 1919 when Oliver’s grandfather, Sir Ambrose Heal, transformed it from a crumbling medieval farmhouse into an Arts & Crafts haven.
Sir Ambrose was renowned for revolutionising the Heal’s brand in the early 20th century with his fresh approach to furniture design and retail, and his distinct taste was manifested in the design of his home. Oliver greatly appreciated the legacy his grandfather left behind, and he spent the last two decades of his life researching the history of Heal's and Baylins Farm.
In 2008, at the age of fifty-nine, Oliver completed a PhD in furniture history and developed his thesis into his 2014 book, Sir Ambrose Heal and the Heal Cabinet Factory 1897 - 1939. This book is the most extensive work to be published on the history of Heal’s, and it is an indispensable contribution to the fields of modern furniture design and retail history.
In the book, Oliver devotes a section to the history of Baylins Farm, and this was just the beginning of his research of the house. Until the last months of his life, Oliver continued to research Baylins Farm and was able to complete a full history of the house from its medieval conception to the present day. His passion for documenting the history of his home was inspiring, and it was fitting that this is where he spent his final days.
One of Oliver’s last contributions to preserving the Heal legacy was his gifting of three family portraits from Baylins Farm. He gifted two portraits of his great-great-grandparents, the Heal’s founders, John Harris and Fanny, to the Heal’s Tottenham Court Road store. These can now be seen on display on the store’s ground floor.
He gifted the third portrait of Sir Ambrose painted by Edward Halliday to the National Portrait Gallery, putting him in his rightful place amongst the greatest figures in British history. Thanks to Oliver’s generosity, these important family portraits may now be appreciated by the public.
Heal’s was not the only subject on which Oliver published work, and in 2020 he released another book on automobile history. Oliver’s interest in automobiles came from two sources in his life: first through his father, who collected and raced cars; and then through his wife, Annik Coatalen. Annik, a French ballerina and Royal Ballet School trained teacher, is the granddaughter of Louis Coatalen, who was a pioneering automobile designer and engineer of the early 20th century.
His fascinating history is memorialised in Oliver’s book, Louis Coatalen: Engineering Impresario of Humber, Sunbeam, Talbot, Darracq. It is evident that talent runs deep in both the Heal and Coatalen families, and in 2019 Annik also published a book on her artist mother, Anna Coatalen, titled Anna Coatalen: Art for Happiness et Bonheur.
Thanks to their mutual appreciation for preserving family history, Oliver and Annik’s books have ensured that their families’ legacies will not be forgotten. Oliver will be missed by many, but his own personal legacy will remain alive through his work and through the memories of people who had the privilege of knowing him.
Heal’s will always be indebted to Oliver’s research, and as a company, we will continue to honour the history which he so thoroughly preserved. Our thoughts are with Oliver’s family in their time of grief. He will be deeply missed by his wife Annik, three stepdaughters, Sandie, Anna and Claire, a son, Felix, and five grandchildren, Jules, Zoé, Augustin, Amelie and Ida, whom he loved dearly.
More articles by Cross Nelson: Ambrose Heal at Home: a glimpse into the private collection of the famed furniture designer
[ INSPIRATION ]
At Heal's
Did you know that there is a connection between The Hundred and One Dalmatians and Heal’s? The classic story that brought us the spotted pup obsessed Cruella de Vil, was written by none other than a former Heal’s employee, Dodie Smith.
Before Dodie became a successful writer, she worked on the shopfloor at Heal’s in the 1920s and 30s, selling toys and gifts in the store’s Little Gallery. It was never Dodie’s dream to work at Heal’s, but after an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a stage actress, she was in need of a steady job.
Her biographer, Valerie Grove, wrote that Dodie went to her interview at Heal’s in 1923 ‘with a heavy heart’ and she was ‘not temperamentally suited to the shopgirl’s humdrum life of clocking in from nine to six.’ Despite her reluctance to enter a ‘humdrum’ working life, Dodie worked at Heal’s for nearly a decade, and her time at the store became one of the most important periods of her life.
Dodie Smith surrounded by toys in Heal’s Little Gallery in the 1920’s. Not only did Dodie have a successful professional career at the store, but she also entered a defining chapter of her personal life since it was at Heal’s where she began a romantic relationship with the store’s director, Ambrose Heal.
Dodie was known at Heal’s for her offbeat personality and quirky appearance, and this eccentricity caught the attention of the married Ambrose Heal who began a flirtatious relationship with her in her first three years at the store. It wasn’t until 1927 that their affair officially began, and at this time Ambrose was also romantically involved with another Heal’s employee, Prudence Maufe. However, Ambrose and Dodie’s relationship was not simply romantic, and Ambrose also became a supporter of Dodie’s writing career.
Before Dodie began writing novels, she wrote for the stage, and since Ambrose was an admirer of theatre, he was attracted to her ambition to become a playwright. His support for her writing began when he shared her first staged play, Autumn Crocus, with the producer Nigel Playfair, who praised her writing and made a move to put it on, but was outbid by his rival producer, Basil Dean.
Ambrose also contributed to Dodie’s second play, Service, a play set at a family owned department store directly based off of Heal’s. The play’s lead, Gabriel Service, was the Ambrose Heal of the fictional ‘Service’s’ department store, and Ambrose even supplied Heal’s furniture for the sets.
These two plays cemented Dodie as a successful playwright in London, and eventually gained her recognition in America when Autumn Crocus went to Broadway. This play also garnered Dodie the first film adaptation of her work in 1934, casting her into the mainstream entertainment industry.
A poster for the 1934 film version of Autumn Crocus starring Fay Compton and Ivor Novello.
In these same years, Dodie also met Alec Beesley, a fellow Heal’s co-worker and the man who would become her future husband. Things became rather tangled when Dodie entered this love triangle with two of her colleagues, and eventually she ended the affair with Ambrose in 1932 and married Alec in 1939.
Even though their romantic relationship ended, Ambrose and Dodie did remain friends and he continued to support her plays, even serving as a backer for her fourth play Bonnet Over the Windmill in 1937.
Ultimately, with her success as a playwright, Dodie no longer needed to work at Heal’s, but she continued to work irregular short shifts as a toy buyer until 1932. Dodie’s work in the toy department is especially relevant this year since Heal’s has reintroduced toys to the store for the first time in nearly a decade.
We may not have the whimsical Dodie Smith to sell toys anymore, but it is fun to imagine the children’s author helping children and parents pick out the perfect toy. Photographs of Dodie at work in the Little Gallery in the 1920s show her surrounded by stuffed animals, rocking horses, dolls, and even a toy Heal’s delivery coach. The toys currently for sale at the store are similar to what Dodie was selling a century ago: a colourful range of stuffed animals, dolls, and wooden playsets by Little Dutch, OYOY, and Vitra.
Reintroducing toys to the store this season came just in time for the holidays, which has always been a favourite time of year at Heal’s. A Heal’s Christmas poster from when Dodie worked at the store depicts Noah’s Ark, with the slogan ‘Heal’s Ark is a refuge in the flood of Christmas Shopping.’ Fittingly, one of our new toys this year is a wooden Noah’s Ark playset by Little Dutch that recalls this historic Christmas poster. It is fair to say that Dodie was so enthusiastic about Christmas time at Heal’s that she continued to run the toy department at Christmas until 1931, even when she was only working a few hours a week.
Left: The 1930’s ‘Heal’s Ark’ Christmas poster. Right: Noah’s Ark wooden playset by Little Dutch now available at Heal’s.
To conclude the Dodie Smith story, her fascination with Dalmatians began in 1934 when she received her first Dalmatian as a birthday gift from her husband. She named the dog Pongo, which later became the name of her canine hero in The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Pongo also served as inspiration for Cruella de Vil’s iconic black and white fashion when Dodie’s friend, the actress Joyce Kennedy, told her that Pongo ‘would make a nice fur coat.’
Dodie herself was also very fashionable, making her own unique clothes when she first began working at Heal’s, so her own love of fashion could have served as inspiration for Cruella’s couture craze. The book was published in 1956 and Disney made it into a film shortly after in 1961, beginning the first of several remakes to come in the following decades, including Cruella in 2021.
This most recent adaptation gives the imagined backstory of Cruella de Vil, and in the film the young Cruella even works as a cleaner at Liberty department store in London before becoming a villainous fashion designer. This shopgirl to celebrity parallel between Dodie and Cruella cleverly tips a cap to Dodie’s own backstory at Heal’s.
Dodie with her first Dalmatian Pongo in 1934. In a 1957 letter to Walt Disney, Dodie thanked him for turning the book into a film, writing ‘I always hoped you might—so much so that, when I was writing it, I often found myself visualising the scenes as they would be in cartoon.’ Even though nearly thirty years had passed between Dodie’s work at Heal’s and her publication of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, it is clear that her years at Heal’s helped her begin a successful career as a writer.
The ‘humdrum’ shopgirl job that Dodie was so reluctant to accept, gave her the financial stability to support a writing career, and introduced her to people who also supported her ambitions. She was a dreamer who set her mind to the life she wanted and did what she had to do to make it a reality, even if that meant giving up her dreams of acting to work at a department store.
So next time you read or watch The Hundred and One Dalmatians, just remember that the woman behind the classic once only daydreamed of entertaining the world with her stories while she sold toys at Heal’s.
A first edition copy of The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
For further reading on Dodie Smith please refer to Valerie Grove’s biography, Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith.
Words: Cross Nelson
Sir Ambrose Heal is a name that is very much associated with London, especially since Heal and Son has been at the same address on Tottenham Court Road since 1818. However, when he was not in London Heal could be found in the Buckinghamshire countryside at his home, Baylins Farm.
A world apart from the bustle of Tottenham Court Road, Baylins Farm is a 15th-century farmhouse that was converted by Heal into an Arts and Crafts style haven in 1919. It is tempting to imagine what the private space of a furniture designer might look like, and what sort of objects he might surround himself with, and thankfully, the house has been almost perfectly preserved to give us a look into the private collection of Ambrose Heal.
Today, the house is still lived in by Heal’s grandson, Oliver Heal, but it is not open to the public, so these photos provide a window into the collection of furniture and art that makes Baylins Farm such a remarkable home.
View of the front of Baylins Farm, with the inlaid brick ‘H’ for HealHeal bought Baylins Farm in 1919 with his wife, Edith, and together the couple made the renovation of the house a collaborative project. To mark their ownership of the home in a truly medieval way, their initials 'A' and 'E' can be found cast on the front rainwater hoppers on the exterior, and an 'H' was inlaid into the bricks next to them, as seen in the photo above.
Not only was the project a collaboration between the two of them, but also a collaboration with other contemporary craftsmen and artists all working in the Arts and Crafts style. Heal was a follower of the Arts and Crafts movement, which was rooted in the return to the handicrafts of the medieval age as a reaction against the advanced industrialisation replacing human made art with machine made art.
Considering how influential the Arts and Crafts philosophy was to the design of Heal’s furniture, it is no surprise that he wanted to live in a space which exemplified that very philosophy. By renovating a medieval farm house into his home, he was quite literally reviving the medieval period to exist in the 20th century.
Baylins Farm dates from 1450, with an addition of a first floor in 1563, and when the house was renovated, the architects were able to preserve the original timber frames. One of the most Arts and Crafts features of the home are the 1563 timber beams on the parlour ceiling, which were painted with multi-colored, gilded designs by the artist MacDonald Gill in 1920.
Hand painted ceilings were a traditional medieval practice, yet this was a very avant-garde choice on Heal’s behalf since painted ceilings were by no means a 20th-century fashion. Fortunately, the ceiling still remains in the same manner today, timeless over a century later.
View of the parlour with the 1920 painted ceiling by MacDonald GillJust below the ceiling is another one of Heal’s creative embellishments to the room, a fireplace decorated with painted tiles showing the signs of the zodiac and the four winds surrounding the sun.
These tiles were painted by Minnie McLeish, who designed textiles for Heal and Son, and so they represent yet another important collaboration between Heal and contemporary artists of the time.
The collaboration on these tiles goes even further since Heal actually corresponded with the Directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Kew Observatory, and the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, to ensure they were executed accurately. It is this acute attention to detail that made Heal and his designs so successful.
Detail of the astrological fireplace tiles designed by Minnie McLeishNext to the parlour is the dining room, furnished with a dining table and chairs, both designed by Heal himself. What is especially remarkable about Heal using his own furniture in the home, is that models of these pieces were also sold at Heal and Son on Tottenham Court Road.
His mission was to create well designed furniture that was available to everyone, and the fact that he furnished his own home with this furniture guarantees how much he believed in his products.
Another important layer to the history of this dining set is that Heal showed both of these products at the Arts and Craft Exhibition, the table in 1912 and the chairs in 1916. By displaying these pieces at a design trade show like the Arts and Crafts Exhibition demonstrates that Heal not only saw his furniture as commercial products, but also as thoughtfully designed pieces of art.
The chestnut dining table and chairs designed by Ambrose HealStanding just across from the dining table is another exceptional piece of Arts and Crafts furniture that was a collaborative project between Heal and the furniture maker Sidney Barnsley.
Barnsley was one of the leading furniture makers of the Cotswold School, a group of craftsmen who produced handmade furniture using traditional vernacular techniques and local woods of the Cotswold district. Their similar Arts and Crafts approach to furniture design lent itself well to a collaboration, and in 1923, Heal commissioned Barnsley to make him a sideboard for the dining room at Baylins Farm.
The commission was an interesting one, because rather than Barnsley designing the sideboard on his own, a series of letters between the two craftsmen reveals that they sent drawings back and forth until they arrived at a final design together.
In the end, Barnsley sent the sideboard to Baylins Farm, and so the project was completed without the two craftsmen ever meeting. Like the dining set and the timber beams, the sideboard is also still used by the family to this day, exactly a century later.
Oak sideboard designed collaboratively by Ambrose Heal and Sidney BarnsleyWhile there are numerous other pieces of furniture to discuss, the final piece that will be mentioned is one of the most mysterious objects in Heal’s collection. In the living room, underneath the painted ceiling sits an equally colourful, painted wooden chest. While there is no documentation by Heal of how he obtained this chest, a clue to where it comes from is painted on the lid.
On top of the chest is painted, 'Paris' and '1900', indicating that it came from the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Heal and Son had their own booth at the Paris Exposition, and so it is most likely that Heal brought this chest back with him from Paris after the exposition closed. Labels inside the chest written in Swedish reveal that it was made by Gustaf Flinta, a furniture maker from Hedemora, Sweden, who displayed this piece in the Swedish Pavilion at the exposition.
It is unclear how or why Heal selected this chest to bring back to England, or if he even met Gustaf Flinta, but it is known that he was an admirer of Swedish design. Only a year earlier, Heal received one of the first commissions of his career to design furniture for the Standard Hotel in Norrköping, Sweden, and this sparked his lifelong admiration for Swedish design.
Even at Baylins Farm the chest is not the only Swedish object, and there is a cylindrical Swedish tile stove that Heal had imported from Uppsala in what was originally the children’s playroom. So, it may be assumed that he wanted this chest as both a souvenir of the Paris Exposition and a symbol of his love for Swedish decorative arts.
Regardless of the reason, the chest and the Swedish stove add an international layer to his collection, expressing the idea that he wanted to synthesise both domestic and foreign objects that were all united by their Arts and Crafts qualities.
Lid of the Swedish painted chest by Gustaf Flinta
From the ceiling, to the dining room, to the chest, these are just some examples of the many important works that decorate Baylins Farm. Each object seems in dialogue with the other, creating a feeling of thoughtful interior design, but more importantly, thoughtful collecting.
The entire house feels distinctively Heal, in that it is an extension of the principles of Heal’s business model to blend modernity with tradition, united by the timelessness of high quality craftsmanship.
It is a rarity that such a well preserved Arts and Crafts interior still exists today, and the fact that Heal’s own family still lives in the home over a century later shows that he was not only designing for his generation, but for the future.
Swedish tiled stove by E.G. Aspland imported from Uppsala, Sweden (image: Jo Baldwin)
*For further reading on Ambrose Heal and the history of Heal and Son, please refer to Oliver Heal’s book, Sir Ambrose Heal and the Heal Cabinet Factory 1897-1939. For further reading on Heal’s designs for the Standard Hotel in Sweden, please refer to Oliver Heal’s article in the 2004 Furniture History Society Journal, ‘Ambrose Heal in Sweden, 1899.’ All images are taken by the author or Oliver Heal except where noted.
2019 marks 100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus, one of art and design's most influential movements. Characterised by clean, streamlined design, it's had a lasting and widespread impact on everything from architecture to furniture design.
Heal's was one of the first retailers to introduce Bauhaus to the UK under the guidance to of Ambrose Heal. In this blog, we’re taking a look back at our close ties with the Bauhaus and its influence on design today.
What was the Bauhaus?
The Bauhaus was a German art school established by Walter Gropius in 1919. His vision was to bridge the gap between art and industry by combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression.
Prior to his way of thinking, architecture and design were held in higher esteem that craftsmanship and production, but Gropius wanted to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Its slogan, “Art into Industry”, highlights the key concepts of Bauhaus design – functional and simple designs that have been stripped down to their basic elements making them suited to mass production.
Teachers and students from the Bauhaus school designed some of the 20th century’s most iconic pieces of furniture, including the Barcelona, Wassily, and Brno chairs.
Heal’s and the Bauhaus
The Bauhaus spearheaded a wave of experimental design that swept across northern Europe throughout the following decade. Meanwhile, in the UK, many homes were stuck in the Edwardian and Victorian era with highly decorative furnishings and heavy wallpapers and colours.
However, ever the innovator, Ambrose Heal was determined to bring this new wave of international style to the UK and was one of the first retailers to do so. Through a series of exhibitions entitled ‘Modern Tendencies’, held within the stores Mansard Gallery, Ambrose Heal set about showcasing what was for many visitors their first taste of modernist furniture.
The caption reads: "Mies Van Der Rohe's famous Barcelona chair at a new price! Now in chromium plated mild steel, to the designer's own specification - over £100 cheaper than the original stainless steel version. Presented for the first time in this country, at Heal's.
That isn’t to say this new modernist style of furniture was an instant hit with UK audiences. There was an enormous hostility in Britain to the Bauhaus. Frank Pick, the famous design director of London Transport, once said, “Let us leave the continent to pursue their own tricks and go our own way traditionally," when discussing the design of the British Pavilion at the Paris Expo of 1937.
Nevertheless, with each exhibition Heal’s spirit of innovation became more emboldened. In the midst of the Great Depression, Ambrose continued to champion the economy and efficiency of industrially styled furniture.
He invested in nationwide promotional campaigns that championed ‘economy furniture’, one of which was ‘Economy with a Difference at Heal’s 1933’ which took a clear step in the Bauhaus direction.
The catalogue featured chromium-plated steel furniture, including this chair designed by Mies van der Rohe which sold for £2 9s 6d.
Magnus Englund, director and co-founder of Skandium, describes how Heal was very much ahead of his time. “What was interesting with the product was to see how on trend Heal’s has been through the years.
They were the place to go for Arts & Crafts but they also embraced Modernism and quite a stark modernism early on in the late 1920s and early 1930s with black gloss paint and tubular steel, which wasn’t to everyone’s taste at the time.”
The taste for modernist furniture had well and truly been established at Heal's and, in many ways, the store became a showcase for the movement. By 1936 an exhibition entitled ‘Contemporary Furniture by Seven Architects’ featured the work of another former Bauhaus professor Marcel Breuer.
Having fled to London to escape the oppressive climate of Nazi Germany, Breuer began designing for progressive British manufacturer Isokon – whose head of design also happened to be the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius – with a number of these iconic pieces such as his Long Chair sold at Heal’s.
The Bauhaus was eventually forced to close after 14 years with the rise of the Nazi regime. Yet the movement continued to influence designers for generations to come including some of the most recognised names today - Tom Dixon, Matthew Hilton and Philippe Starck's work all reference elements of the distinctive Bauhaus style.
Heal's played an important part in the introduction of the Bauhaus to Britain, cementing its place in the design movement's history. We continue to champion new design styles to this day and take inspiration from Ambrose Heal, who saw the beauty of Bauhaus style before many others.
For a deeper dive into the history of the Bauhaus, take a look at our Bauhaus100 Timeline.
With the opening on a new exhibition of Enid Marx’s work at the House of Illustration, the most comprehensive retrospective of her work mounted in the last 40 years, we’re celebrating the renowned artist who had a close connection with Heal’s.
Enid Marx has become synonymous with mid-century graphic art and textile design. Best known for her iconic London underground fabrics, she also designed textiles for the wartime Utility Furniture Scheme and was the first ever female engraver to be awarded the title of Royal Designer for Industry.
Her career spanned seven decades in which she produced extraordinarily varied work, encompassing patterned paper for Curwen Press, book covers for King Penguin and the stamps for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
Enid Marx's cover for a Book of Modern Verse Having shown a passion and talent for art from an early age, she went on to study at the Royal College of Art during the interwar years, alongside Ravilious and Bawden under Paul Nash, who championed her work. While still at college in 1925 she was commissioned to create patterned papers for Curwen Press, block-printed using wood engravings.
Marx subsequently applied this technique to fabric to create her most celebrated textile designs, fusing a modern aesthetic with traditional methods inspired by her collection of Popular Art. In 1929, she had her own exhibition with the Mansard Gallery at Heal’s and subsequently also displayed her wood-block printing in 1930.
Enid Marx's Feline Phantasy Linocut In 1937 she was commissioned to create the seating moquette for London Transport’s bus and tube train seats. This marked a pivotal progression into industrial design, and her economical yet colourful geometric weaves remain in production today. It led to her appointment to the Utility Furniture Scheme in 1944, for which she created 30 upholstery and curtain fabric designs using limited wartime supplies of yarn.
Luckily for graphic design enthusiasts, a retrospective exhibition of her work has opened at the House of Illustration in King’s Cross. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of her death, it will be the most comprehensive retrospective of her work mounted in the last 40 years, bringing together over 150 pieces from private and public collections. Many of these are being displayed for the first time.
The exhibition at the House of Illustration The exhibition is open until 23rd September 2018. Find out more on the House of Illustration website.
Whilst Heal’s has a long history of famous connections – including the Bloomsbury Group as well as Modigliani – there’s one celebrated name that actually spent time at Heal’s as an employee.
Dodie Smith, author of the classic I Capture the Castle and The Hundred and One Dalmatians, spent nearly 10 years working at our flagship store. Read on for the surprising story of Dodie's time at Heal's…
Dodie Smith and Heal’s
Dodie Smith (1896-1990), acclaimed playwright and author, gas captured the imagination of millions with her compelling storytelling. But before she found fame as a writer, Dodie was a struggling actress in London who eventually gave up her acting pursuits and found a job at Heal’s as a shop assistant. Having joined the business in 1923, she went on to run the toy department among other responsibilities.
She quickly made her mark and was renowned among Heal’s staff for her sharp tongue and quick wit. Undeterred by the formidable presence of Ambrose Heal’s long-term mistress Prudence Maufe, she embarked on an affair with Heal which she delighted in keeping secret from other staff. In Valerie Grove’s book ‘Dear Dodie’, she’s described as “not temperamentally suited to the shop girl’s humdrum life of clocking in from nine to six.”
She was a fiery character that was prone to tardiness and temper tantrums (she once “flung one of the assistants, a heavy girl, across the china department”) but since she was having an affair with the owner of the store, she knew she was unlikely to be sacked. When Dodie began to find success as a playwright towards the end of her time at Heal's, she moved into a new home in Dorset Square. Ambrose Heal offered to provide all the furniture at cost price but Dodie had something very particular in mind for her bedroom.
Having a dislike for conventional wardrobes and chests-of-drawers she suggested purchasing the furniture for that room at Italia House instead. However, Sir Ambrose was horrified at this idea which would have meant buying reproduction furniture, and so he offered to design a suite exactly to her liking. The result was the Dodie wardbrobe which featured inlaid gold art-deco lines.
The Dodie Wardrobe designed by Ambrose Heal (1932)
Dodie and the Heal's Cat
During her time at Heal’s, Dodie became fond of the Heal’s cat which remains on our Cecil Brewer staircase to this day.
She wrote in her autobiography Look Back with Astonishment, “On the sill of a window that lit it was a very tall bronze cat, (really a serval) which I came to think of as presiding deity of Heal’s. I later let it be known that it would grant wishes and I was to see various members of the staff reaching up, rather furtively, to touch its paws. And when I eventually sold the cat, which was priced at £40, Mr Heal wrote firmly to the customer – who must have been startled – cancelling the sale, and had a card lettered saying ‘Heal’s Mascot. Not for Sale’.”
The beloved Heal's Cat
After several years working at Heal’s and having grown tired of competing for Ambrose’s affection, Dodie married a former co-worker, Alec Beesley in 1939. By this stage she was making a name for herself as a playwright and, following rapturous reception of her sixth, Dead Octopus, Dodie and her new husband moved the United States. She continued to receive regular letters from Ambrose Heal.
While homesick in the US she wrote her first novel, I Capture the Castle, which was - and still is - very well received. The opening line “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink….” is among one of the most quoted first lines in British fiction and captures Dodie’s strong personality and style of writing. Ambrose himself is even quoted as saying “what a marvellously Dodie-esque opening!”
Dodie and the Dalmatians
Inspired by her own love of animals, especially Dalmatians, she later tried her hand at children’s fiction. The Hundred and One Dalmatians became her most famous publication, largely in thanks to Walt Disney’s film adaption of the story.
Dodie had had a number of Dalmatians as pets over the years and after her husband’s sudden death in 1987, her last Dalmatian, Charley, became her constant companion. She even set aside a sum of money in her will for his care in the event of her death. When Dodie did pass away in 1990, Charley followed just three weeks later.
Dodie Smith and Charley Come visit the Heal’s Cat and explore the place Dodie spent many of her formative years at our Tottenham Court Road store.
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