Sir Ambrose Heal was an English furniture designer and writer. He was educated at Marlborough College and the Slade School of Art, London, before following an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker from 1890 to 1893, when he joined the family firm, Heal & Son, established in 1810 in London by John Harris Heal (d. 1833).

By 1897 furniture was produced to his designs; in 1898 he became a partner, and his first catalogue, Plain Oak Furniture, was issued, which, like Simple Bedroom Furniture (1899), contains designs in a simple Arts and Crafts style. Heal exhibited regularly at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London. His influence was evident in the catalogues and advertising of the business (he had an enduring interest in typography), whose design policy he increasingly directed. In 1907 he was appointed Managing Director and in 1913, Chairman. His inexpensive, stylish furniture was appropriate to the new garden-city developments, and in 1907 he furnished a cottage for the Urban Cottages and Rural Homesteads Exhibition in Letchworth. He was elected a member of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1910 and was a founder-member of the Design and Industries Association (D.I.A.) in 1915 with, among others, his cousin, the architect Cecil Brewer (1871-1918), who at this time completed the rebuilding of the Heal & Son store, an important development in shop architecture. In the 1930s Heal experimented with new materials: steel tube, aluminium, wood laminates for furniture. He was knighted in 1933. Alongside design and manufacturing, Heal was an active researcher and writer.

Source: M. Wagstaff: 'Heal, Ambrose', The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 10 October 2003)