ARAM STORE

Representing a huge expansion from the original furniture design showroom opened almost forty years ago by Zeev Aram, the new store is a real family business. Zeev is joined in the venture by his son Daniel and by his daughter, Ruth, who has been established since 1995 in Hampstead with her Ruth Aram Shop, where she has brought her own blend of modern furniture classics and eclectic accessories to a loyal following.

ARAM is a destination store. As well as offering an unsurpassed range of furniture, lighting and accessories, an entire floor has been set aside to show experimental or new work by up and coming designers continuing the process that Zeev has championed for over thirty years.

When Zeev Aram opened his first showroom in 1964, a small, white space on London's Kings Road, he might as well have landed on the moon. At the time, he recalls, you could buy the odd piece of Eames but generally, the UK was a modern furniture desert. And here was the work of Castiglioni, Breuer, and Le Corbusier, for the first time available to the public to buy and put in their own homes. Looking into that tiny showroom with its open slot cut into the window for mail, was like looking into the future. Zeev would stand outside, listening to the comments of passers-by as they stopped and stared through the glass at the bright, white, stainless steel interior. Most were incredulous. "Who needs this rubbish?" they asked. They called it clinical, and wondered why anyone would want to buy 'hospital furniture'. For 33 year-old Zeev, it was a dream come true. "The important thing is that there was a reaction, " he says. "I was afraid people would just walk past." People thought the showroom and its modern furniture were an affront. He even began receiving hate mail. A few months later, Terence Conran opened Habitat further down the road; for the first time, the British consumer had an alternative to chintz.