While best known for his leadership in disseminating Arts and Crafts movement furnishings in the decades around 1900, Ambrose Heal continued to lead the family company until 1953, providing for the British middle classes "beauty… due to well-chosen materials, admirable proportion, harmonious design, and rigid economy of ornament." This 1898 description of Heal and Son’s furniture also applies to the plywood "dinner wagon," which was advertised in a company catalogue in 1938.
Designed about 1935, this trolley demonstrates Ambrose Heal’s continuing commitment, as chairman of the company, to providing simple, attractive, reasonably priced design. For this role, he was knighted in 1933 and named a royal designer for industry in 1939. Very few British companies were experimenting with breakthroughs in plywood technology developed in the late 1920s, and this Heal’s example contributes to LACMA’s rich collections of the material that made Charles and Ray Eames world famous.
Wendy Kaplan, Curator & Department Head of Decorative Arts and Design
