Back to results

'Twelve-sided library table'

Ref: 2533
  • Designer / Maker

    Designed by Sir Ambrose Heal (1897-1939)

    Manufactured by the Heal Cabinet Factory (1897-1939)

  • Detail

    Oak

    74 x 174 (open) x 133 cm

    English (London), probably 1898

  • Provenance

    Almost certainly made for the Passmore Edwards Settlement, 1898; sold sometime after 1991

  • Literature

    G. LL. Morris and Esther Wood, ‘The Architecture of the Passmore Edwards Settlement’, The Studio, 16 (1899), pp. 11-18, see p. 15 (top), reproduced below

    Oliver Heal, Sir Ambrose Heal and the Heal Cabinet Factory 1897-1939, London, 1914, p. 167

  • Collection

    Private collection

  • Notes

    Oliver Heal (email correspondence, February 2022) suggests that this table is the one photographed in 1991 at Mary Ward Centre, Bloomsbury.

    According to Heal, in his 2014 publication (loc. cit.), ‘In 1898 the most notable special order [from Heal] was for furniture for the Mary Ward Settlement building (then known as the Passmore Edwards Settlement) that had been designed by Cecil Brewer [1871-1918], which included a large twelve-sided library table…’.  According to a foot note, ‘Photographs of the table are dated 3/98, so this 5ft 9 in x 4ft 4 in gate-leg table in fumed oak for Passmore Edwards Settlement was one of the first items made whilst the factory was at Castle Mews.’

    The building, designed by Ambrose Heal’s cousin Brewer in 1897, is discussed by Morris and Wood (op. cit.).

    ‘The Passmore Edwards Settlement began in 1890 as one of the first “settlements” run by socially-conscious middle-class educators for the benefit of local working people and their children.

    It was modelled on Toynbee Hall, which was founded in Whitechapel by the local clergyman Samuel Bennett in 1884 in memory of the Oxford academic and social reformer Arnold Toynbee, who had died in 1883 at the age of thirty.

    In such Settlements young professional men, many of them lawyers, became residents of the Settlement building and in return for board and lodging offered classes in academic and practical subjects to poor adults and children living in the immediate area.

    The Passmore Edwards Settlement was named after the self-made newspaper magnate John Passmore Edwards (1823-1911), the main benefactor of the purpose-built Settlement building which opened at 36-37 Tavistock Place in October 1897.’

    https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/passmore_edwards_settlement.htm