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. Mary Quant and her mini skirt wasn't the only revolution happening in Chelsea that year.

Almost forty years later, Zeev is still excited about his store window. This time however, it is on a much larger scale. Located in the heart of Covent Garden the ARAM store promises to be the capital's top destination for furniture and product design. "I want to give as wide a range as possible to people wanting top quality design and manufacture, along with excellent service." Now that the British have finally embraced modern design, Zeev intends to give it to them in every size, shape and colour, from his beloved Castiglioni Toio lamp to the brand new prototype by an unknown designer fresh from college.

Zeev's appetite for design is insatiable. If there's something new out there, you can guarantee that he will be the first to know about it. Furniture fairs and student degree shows are like oxygen to him. As a student learning to design furniture and interiors at Central School of Art in the late fifties, he signed up for evening classes five days a week. The same energy and passion took him, after he graduated, to work with Erno Goldfinger, Sir Basil Spence and Andrew Renton, and led him to the Cologne Furniture Fair and onto Milan, where he first met Italy's bright new emerging talent in the early sixties. "Magistretti was a young man," he recalls, "and the Castiglioni brothers were still working together." In 1988, he staged his first annual UK graduate show, which would feature his pick of the best ideas and innovations from around the country, all under one roof. They continued until 1994, but have been resurrected as an all year-round feature in the ARAM store. Zeev's show space on the third floor is designed to be a springboard for new talent, from all areas of the applied arts. There will always be something new to see. "There's no need for a PhD in colour theory, or a professorship in design to recognise good design," he says. "All you need is an intelligent pair of eyes and an open mind."