How Bay Area’s ‘rebel’ ceramicist Edith Heath changed the way we live

Edith Heath’s name might not immediately come to mind when we think about people or events that shook up American society in the second half of the 20th century. After all, the late Bay Area ceramicist’s claim to fame was making dinnerware.

But “Edith Heath: A Life in Clay,” a new exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California or OMCA, makes the case for why her “rebel spirit” and beautiful, deceptively simple plates, bowls and cups make her one of the towering figures of mid-century American design.

“What I do is going to change things,” Heath once said, according to one of the many quotes prominently displayed in the exhibition. “Things aren’t going to be the same anymore.”

Inspired by the casual California indoor-outdoor lifestyle and operating out of a Sausalito factory, Heath Ceramics began mass producing dinnerware after the end of World War II. The pieces didn’t look anything like the delicate European china long sought by American households. Heath experimented with clay from the Sierra Nevada foothills to produce sturdy dinnerware that featured clean lines and muted, natural colors that were expressive of the region.

But more than the look, the OMCA show illustrates how Heath’s designs reflected her broader artistic and social imperatives. With the war over, the United States was entering a new era of peace and prosperity. Heath wanted nothing more than to revolutionize how Americans enjoyed life at home.

Heath, who died in 2005, was a largely self-taught ceramicist who grew up the daughter of Danish immigrants on an Iowa farm. After her family lost their farm, she survived the Depression by becoming an arts and crafts teacher for the Works Project Administration, where she was immersed in Bauhaus principles and other progressive ideas. She believed that beautiful objects shouldn’t just be ornamental; they should be useful. She rejected the practice of using “everyday” dishes for family meals but reserving the elegant china for special occasions.

“I made large plates for barbecued steak, baked potato, huge salads; cereal bowls the same as soup bowls, casseroles and oven-to-table ware, for California lifestyle living – or everyday use as well as Sunday Best,” Heath said.

These days, Heath dinnerware is considered high end. That includes Heath’s Chez Panisse line, made in collaboration with Alice Waters, another pioneer in the California good life who likewise focused on local sourcing and how we gather around the dinner table.

According to the exhibit, Heath’s original designs were meant to be as accessible to as many people as possible. Her “stylish yet functional products” also were “designed to endure,” says Drew Heath Johnson, the museum’s curator of photography and visual culture

As a major Bay Area artist, Heath has long been on the radar of the OMCA staff, who began collecting her works in the 1960s, Johnson said. But “Edith Heath: Life in Clay” represents the museum’s first exhibition devoted solely to her life and work.

Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the exhibit doesn’t offer visitors “a traditional ceramics exhibition,” said Jennifer M. Volland, the show’s guest curator. There are more than 50 pieces of ceramics, but the exhibit also is filled with historic objects, photographs, a documentary video and personal memorabilia.

One thing the exhibit points out is how quickly Heath mastered her craft and built a commercially successful company whose products were embraced by a burgeoning middle class, Volland says.

A detailed timeline shows Heath and her social worker husband, Brian, arriving in San Francisco in 1941. Within two years of Heath taking her first ceramics class, she had already won her first solo show at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, attracting the attention of Gump’s department store and other retailers dealing with wartime limits on European imports.

By 1946, Edith and Brian Heath had opened their factory in Sausalito, where he managed the business, and she continued to experiment with designs and means of production. But her experiments often put her at odds with long-held practices. For one thing, Heath refused to use standard white clay imported from Europe. Johnson called her an “alchemist,” who had a scientist’s interest in how California clays interacted with one another chemically in the kiln to produce things that looked very different from the status quo.

Heath also upset the Bay Area ceramics community by developing machine-assisted production to keep up with demand. The exhibit quotes Heath saying, “I was very badly criticized for being part of the establishment, that I was no longer an artist, that I had sold out.”

Heath believed that any manufactured piece based on a handmade prototype had as much artistic value as those that were individually handmade. And if Heath had “sold out,” it didn’t hurt her reputation as an artist. Coupe, her first official line of dinnerware, became an instant classic when it was introduced in 1947. Over the next decade, Heath dinnerware was featured in influential magazines and museum shows covering trends in modern American design.

“Edith Heath: A Life in Clay” also shows how Edith and Brian Heath enjoyed their own idiosyncratically Bay Area version of the California good life, setting up house on an old barge they first docked in Sausalito, near houseboats occupied by other bohemian types. A display shows how Heath would have set her own outdoor table on the barge with a nonchalant mix-and-match of her own plates and bowls.

The exhibit follows Heath as she oversaw the 1960 construction of a larger factory space in Sausalito  – one with bay views and a modern, open floor plan – and the company’s move into manufacturing tiles used in a number of major mid-century architectural projects, including the Hayward Civic Center Auditorium and Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum.

After Edith and Brian Heath died in the early 2000s, the company was sold to current owners and Sausalito residents Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey. But Heath Ceramics has never really gone out of fashion. “Countless people” have brought Heath dinnerware and tile into their homes, Volland said. The company’s showrooms in Sausalito and San Francisco remain popular stops for people interested in American design, as well as dinnerware.

“What began as a rebellion against imported white clay more than 50 years ago is now a modern-day classic,” Volland says. “Edith Heath has forever changed the cultural landscape of American design through Heath Ceramics.

“Edith Heath: A Life in Clay” continues through Oct. 30 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St, museumca.org.