Robert Heritage

Born in Birmingham, Robert Heritage—known to everyone as Bob—first trained at the Birmingham College of Art and later at the Royal College of Art in London, where he studied under R.D. Russell in the School of Wood, Metals, and Plastics. It was there that he met his wife, Dorothy, a textile designer, with whom he would later open his own studio.

Together they worked as consultants for some of the leading British furniture manufacturers of the time—Archie Shine, Beaver & Tapley, Gordon Russell, and Heals—specializing in domestic furniture for living and dining rooms. His modular wall-mounted storage system for Beaver & Tapley, featuring a built-in spirit level for easy installation, was particularly innovative. In 1967, Heritage was commissioned to design a dining chair for the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II. His design, manufactured by Ernest Race, was groundbreaking in its use of adhesives to bond aluminum castings.

Alongside his furniture work, Heritage also designed products for Concord Lighting, Rotaflex, GEC, and Technolyte, as well as cutlery for Yote and clocks for Smiths Industries. His adjustable spotlights for Concord Lighting were widely imitated and helped bring this type of directional lighting into domestic interiors—an idea that until then had been largely confined to technical or commercial spaces.

Heritage’s work is distinguished by a careful balance of technical innovation, simplicity, and timelessness—qualities that have made many of his designs enduring classics. Deeply committed to teaching too, he served as professor and later head of the School of Furniture at the Royal College of Art in London between 1974 and 1985.

Named a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 1963 and honored with a CBE, Robert Heritage remained for over five decades a quiet yet unmistakable figure in British design—admired as much for his talent as for his humility.