Sleeping with the Enemy: Sir Ambrose Heal and Modernist Magazine Advertising

Sir Ambrose Heal (1872–1959) of London’s long-standing Heal & Son furniture shop has been celebrated for his simultaneous commitment to modernism and traditional craftsmanship in furniture design. This dual loyalty was also fundamental to his advertising campaigns, and nowhere is it more evident than in the Heal & Son advertisements published in modernist magazines. This article examines a selection of advertisements from the commercial magazine Country Life (begun in 1897) and from the two artistic periodicals Rhythm (1911–1913) and Colour (1914–1932) and demonstrates that, far from being a simple buyer-seller relationship, the affiliation between modernist magazines and the market was a mutually beneficial one in which both parties – business and magazine – learned from and adapted to one another to ensure the success of both. Through examining these advertisements, who created them, and where they were published, this article demonstrates how Heal & Son’s marketing techniques were influenced by the modernist magazines that were sustained by the advertising revenue from businesses such as Heal’s, revealing that the relationship between modernist periodicals and the commercial market was much more collaborative and mutually beneficial than has been yet recognized in modernist studies.