Heath Ceramics – A Legacy of Integrity
Founded by artist Edith Heath in 1948, Heath Ceramics creates superlative dinnerware, tableware and tiles that reflect the finest American traditions of craftsmanship.
Edith Heath was more than a ceramicist: she was a chemist and businesswoman, and utterly confident in her ability to change the ceramics game; “what I do is going to change things,” she once remarked. When she founded her eponymous studio in 1948, she was determined to make beautiful, functional pieces that found a middle ground between the hand- and machine-made, all while championing sustainability and employee wellbeing – Heath’s clay was (and still is) formulated to be fired at lower-than-typical temperatures, and she insisted that each workstation be near a window. Her design-led approach still grounds the company 20 years after her death, and Heath Ceramics has become synonymous with thoughtful, well-crafted dinnerware and tile.
Heath’s legacy of innovation is especially evident in the Heath Clay Studio in San Francisco. While two factories are responsible for making Heath Ceramics products, it’s in this studio that a fleet of artisans continue to experiment and push forward the possibilities of glazes, forms and techniques to bring new pieces into being.
It’s not just in this singular environment that boundary-pushing products are created. Limited seasonal collections, released twice a year, bring new palettes and glazing techniques into the mix – and are an opportunity for the brand to work with other makers and expand its scope. Heath’s new winter collection – which includes a host of beloved dinnerware shapes in fresh, wintry glazes, as well as new hand-thrown work from the Heath Clay Studio – showcases the brand’s enduring passion for experimentation.
A human touch is key to Heath Ceramics’ decades-long success. Edith Heath was rigorous in her pursuit of excellence and her ‘design, make, sell’ model means the company takes an all-encompassing approach to every product that enters the market – whether in its four Californian showrooms, its new Austin, Texas store or its online platform. Dinnerware is still made in the factory Edith Heath and her husband Brian opened in Sausalito, California, in the 1950s, while tiles are crafted a few miles away in San Francisco.
Since its earliest era, Heath has embraced a model that balances the variability of hand-making with the consistency of machine-making. Today, a team of skilled makers – kiln operators, glazers, forming specialists, and more – imbue each piece with a human touch.
While Heath Ceramics built its reputation on dinner- and tableware, its pioneering approach to form, glaze and colour has found fresh form in its architectural tile ranges. These mobilise the studio’s glazes in a range of colours, patterns and textures to suit a variety of projects and palettes. Versatility goes beyond colour: the Classic Field collection boasts tiles in 21 shapes and sizes, while the Dual Glaze range fuses multiple glazes into one triangular or rectangular tile.
The pattern-rich Mural series features Reed, a dynamic rectangular tile in six pre-configured colour palettes, including the alluring pink shades of Canyon, and the striking geometric form of Twill. The newest addition to the tile range, Arc, is an extension of the brand’s experimentation with custom stencilling and gradients, and highlights the unique interactivity of layered glazes.
