Poster, for Heal's exhibiton of metal and glass furniture, designer Norman Weaver, printed Dangerfield Printers, 1933

Poster, white, black and green, with minimalist chair and coffee table(?) in front of white and green panels (window and curtain). Text in white and green.

The exhibitions in the Mansard Gallery at the top of Heal's established the shop as the foremost modern furniture store of the 1920s and 30s. Although Ambrose Heal personally believed in the DIA principle of 'fitness for purpose', good design and traditional manufacture, he recognised a public demand for European Modernist and Art Deco styles. Chrome was first introduced in 1930 to successfully revive the recession-hit bed department, offering a chic yet fashionable alternative at half the price.

While some of Heal's metal furniture was by Bauhaus designers such as Mies Van der Rohe (in the Economy Catalogue of 1933) and Marcel Breuer, the poster significantly shows pieces which follow art deco forms rather than pure modernist aesthetic. The shop's mailing list targeted people whose houses had a rateable value of over £50 and owned a telephone, as well as designers and architects.

[Julia Bigham, 'British Design at Home', p116]

E.237-1980