Heath Ceramics has been thoughtfully making simple, functional, and satisfyingly beautiful objects in the Bay Area since 1948. Similiar to Shinola, Heath Ceramics is a design-driven business and together in our San Francisco store this week we’ll be discussing the use of design-led manufacturing principles and craftsmanship as fundamental business practices for longevity.
Join us in this discussion this week on Thursday, June 9 in our San Francisco store (722 Montgomery Street) from 7-9 p.m. Purchase tickets, here.
Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey purchased the company together in 2003 and continue to follow the in the footsteps of previous owners, Edith and Brian Heath, by keeping every product handcrafted by skilled artisans in small runs in the Bay Area. Meet Catherine at Thursday’s event.
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When and why did you decide to purchase Heath Ceramics?
Back in 2002, Robin and I found ourselves at a bit of a crossroads — we’d both been working with large companies to design product, but we weren’t fulfilled by the process and were looking for a change without knowing exactly what that looked like. We had recently moved to Sausalito and were exploring the city when we came across a funky old building, which we soon realized was the Heath Ceramics factory. It wasn’t in the best shape — at that point, it had been a few years since Brian Heath died and Edith was struggling. There were few employees and the store was in disarray, and that’s when an idea started brewing. The idea of investing in this business, of preserving it and turning it around, and to have the designing and the making of the product under one roof—that was exactly what we were missing. We bought the company in 2003.
Where do you create your ceramics?
We have the original factory in Sausalito built in 1959 where we make our dinnerware and tabletop accessories, and the tile factory in San Francisco we opened in 2012.
How has Heath changed since you acquired it?
In many ways it hasn’t changed, from a design perspective. Just as Edith and Brian did, we appreciate clean, simple design that will stand the test of time. We have great respect for the material and don’t want to hide it. Our focus is, and has always been, on manufacturing at human scale and we plan to continue this way.
But one of the biggest changes is that we design and make much more than we did when we bought the company in 2003. Back then, Heath only made a handful of products designed by Edith decades before. They’re now iconic pieces for us, some of which we still produce today, but we’ve slowly added new designs, new colors and glazes, and new products to our lineup. We’ve really enjoyed applying our design principles to all aspects of the business, from products to our retail stores to what we want our customer experience to be. We now have showrooms in the Ferry Building, Los Angeles (where we also have a clay studio), and the Mission District in San Francisco (where we built a new tile factory and our primary clay studio). We’re at around 200 employees, up from 24 in 2003.
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The Heath factory has floor to ceiling windows.
What jobs has your company created?
We’ve brought manufacturing jobs back into the city, and created administrative jobs, retail jobs — the diversity in jobs we offer is actually pretty significant. We started with 24 employees and now we’re at around 200.
Why is transparency a big part of your company?
Honesty and integrity are important to us, because we want the public to understand the value in what we’re trying to do. So, as part of that, we share our process: we hold regular weekly tours of our dinnerware and tile factories, and our factory is literally transparent—it’s got floor to ceiling windows so people can see in. We want to be seen as part of the community we’re contributing to.
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An unfired ware cart in the Heath Sausalito Factory.