Ambrose Heal

Sir Ambrose Heal (3 September 1872, Crouch End - 15 November 1959, Beaconsfield) was an English furniture designer and businessman in the first half of the 20th century.

The great-grandson of John Harris Heal, founder of the Heals furniture manufacturing and retail business, he attended Marlborough College () before serving a two-year apprenticeship to cabinetmakers James Plucknett in Warwick. This was followed by six months working for Graham and Biddle, furnishers, of London's Oxford Street.

In 1893 he joined Heal & Son, working in the bedding factory, but in the mid-1890s he began designing simple, sturdy furniture, often in plain oak (in contrast to Heals' standard "Queen Anne" and "Old English" styles). Although initially not popular with sales staff - who called them "prison furniture" - his designs appeared at exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, and soon became so successful that prejudices were overcome. He continued to exhibit special pieces at Arts and Crafts exhibitions for more than thirty years, but his most significant contribution was to make simpler, well-designed, well-made furniture available to a broader middle-class public.

Undoubtedly influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris, he nonetheless took advantage of machinery where appropriate. His simple, no-frills designs, created around 1905, appealed particularly to the inhabitants of the new Garden Cities and Suburbs. He had already patented (with Hamilton Temple Smith) a unit furniture system in 1915 when he became a founding member of the Design and Industries Association, which campaigned for "Fitness for Purpose" in industrial production.

In 1913, on the death of his father, he was elected chairman of Heals, using this position to champion artistic design within furniture manufacture and marketing. In 1933, he was knighted for raising standards of design, and in 1939 was elected to the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. The Royal Society of Arts awarded him the Albert Gold Medal for services to industrial design in 1954.

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