Heal’s, the department store for the home, is a one-stop shop where you can find everything from mattresses to light fittings. On 8 December from 6–9pm, #TeamED is co-hosting a Christmas shopping evening at the Heal’s Tottenham Court Road store. There will be food and drink, bars on every floor and a live musical performance from Pop Choir, as well as the chance to shop our curated design picks and pick up a copy of our January issue with a special limited-edition cover. Look out for our #EDapproved swing tags on the night – we’ve placed them on our favourite pieces from the latest Heal’s collections. The Great Heals Bodging Race Following it’s launch in 2014, Heal’s Modern Craft Market returned this year with a new challenge for six renowned furniture designers from the Bodging Milano project. Myself, Chris Eckersley, William Warren, Sarah Kay, Carl Clerkin and Koji Katsuragi were reunited in the famous Tottenham Court Road shop window of Heals for a week of bodging.
In a race against time, and each other, using a range of offcuts from Ercol and Sitting Firm, the bodgers set about crafting objects of beauty and desire.Bodging is a hands-on craft that utilises unseasoned wood and traditional Windsor chair making techniques to create unique, one off designs. Press and customers were invited to vote for their favourite design, and I’m delighted to have won!London based style and interiors gurus Heal’s have a fantastic sale on at the moment with some beautiful pieces at generous discounts. What we love about Heal’s is that everything looks that little bit different and smarter than a lot of the things you find on the high street and they carry a whole bunch of iconic designers. In our experience at least, their customer service is spot on too, such as how they will assemble a lot of the products you buy from them on delivery. None of that awkward ‘apply bracket X to grommet C’ or worse, those impenetrable pictures with no words and 3 Allen keys!
Resident Idealist shopper and design fan Ben picks out his favourite pieces in the current sale. This contemporary update of the quintessential Chesterfield sofa adds the massively useful convertibility into a daybed or sofa bed. If you’ve ever tried to sleep on a regular Chesterfield and woken up with a stiff neck, you’ll see straight away why this caught my eye! It’s designed for small-space living and has a click-clack mechanism like sofa beds of old, rather than the ‘let’s hide a bed in the base’ style you see. It’s available in slate grey velvet and antique faux brown leather with dark stained oak legs and the guys that deliver it put it together. Reduced from £1,579 to £1,279. This sofa bed is a new take on a Scandi classic by by Danish designer Per Weiss for Ambrose. The light blue is cool enough to be midcentury and the form is elegantly simple and functional, like all good design. Like the Chesterfield, it was a click clack mechanism and the arms can be set at different angles for ultimate comfort.
This is a really nice piece. Sitting pretty within contemporary interiors or alongside mid-century styled pieces, its simple forms make a functional addition for homes limited on space but unwilling to compromise when it comes to style and comfort, with little designer details like matching piping and lightly tapered turned elm legs. Simply push both arms down for a day bed, or remove the back cushion for a comfortable single bed. And it’s comfortable too, which is essential if you’re going to kip on it. Was £799 Now £639 I really want an Eames recliner! And right now they’re 15% off — Was £5,242 Now £4,455. I could write for days about how iconic and distinctive they are, how the body-hugging shape was inspired by a baseball glove, how the Eames husband and wife team were inspired by the work they were doing creating plywood stretchers for the Army to experiment with furniture forms, but in the end all I can say is everyone I know who has one loves it and I want a piece of design history myself!
One tip: don’t make the mistake of just getting the chair: you need the ottoman too for full comfortable, reclining listening to music comfort. This black leather and cherry wood option is the classic. One of our favourite current designers, Tom Dixon, is also on sale. This laser-cut pendant light is down from £100 to £85. An unusual and captivating structured shade, the Etch pendant is designed to cast atmospheric angular shadows when lit. Taking its name from the overlaying patterns of steel, this unique Tom Dixon ceiling light mixes lustred surface and contemporary construction to create a stunning decorative feature for modern homes. We’ve featured George Nelson before as a Design Hero and his iconic Ball Clock is 15% off too. Nelson had a sense of fun and wanted to bring the colour of the Space Age to American homes. This elegant ‘this used to be the future’ classic is quirky, tactile and timeless (sorry, terrible pun). Here at The Idealist towers, we love the multi-coloured one, but the orange is playfully 60s too and would look sharp on a bare-brick wall.
This one is amazing! It has all the hallmarks of classic Ercol style (a perfect match to all the design classics we are featuring today) and has all the space you need to store your set top box, DVD player and other ugly but essential electronics out of sight. And you don’t have to open the doors to operate them! The Romana oak TV cabinet features a cupboard section for storing your digiboxes and two drawers, ideal for storing DVDs and an infrared eye which enables you to use your remote control with your digiboxes and satellite boxes stored out of sight and away from dust, behind the closed wooden doors. The drawers and door hinges have soft-close mechanisms to give a gentle shut and the piece is oak, finished in a clear matt lacquer to show the beauty of the wood, like all design classics should! Was £1,615 Now £1,292. We’ve featured this one before in Ellie’s round-up of copper furnishings and accessories, but it deserves a closer look as it’s down from £345 to £293 (15% off).