Heal and Co (Ambrose Heal) Arts & Crafts Cotswold School Oak Wardrobe c. 1930

Heal and Co (Ambrose Heal): One of the first Arts and Crafts makes to bring efficient business processes to the design and production of quality furniture. Sir Ambrose Heal had the vision to work with the most skilled craftspeople of the day, creating furniture that was comfortable, beautiful – reflecting the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement but at a more affordable price. Today Heals furniture from the period 1900 to 1940 is highly prized

Oak: The most British of woods, that can produce really special results. Oak has been used for hundreds of years to construct everything from sea-going vessels to fine furniture. Quarter sawn boards are very straight grained and have distinctive growth rings and medullary rays that give a very beautiful effect as well as being renowned for their superior stability and strength

The Cotswold School was a development of the Arts and Craft Movement started largely by Ernest Gimson and the brothers Sidney and Ernest Barnsley. The furniture is instantly recognisable with its simple lines, attention to the finest of details, and use of beautiful materials. Cotswold School designs were crafted from local materials using traditional tools and techniques and with decorative details derived largely from utilitarian elements: exposed joinery, unusual panels, interesting pulls and latches crafted either from wood or from metal using traditional smithing techniques, and close attention to form as well as to wood grain and pattern. Where decorative details were added they generally took the form of traditional embellishment such as exposed joints, chamfered edges and chip carved edge details.The style was embraced and developed by other designers and craftsmen including Gordon Russell, Stanley Webb Davies in Cumbria, Sid Barnsley's son Edward, Arthur Romney Green in Hampshire, Robin Nance in St Ives and Ambrose Heal are a handful of such men out of many. The best developed their own style within the established tradition