History and Values
History //
Edith Heath (1911-2005) founded Heath Ceramics in the mid-forties when, following her one-woman show at San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor, her pieces were picked up for sale at Gump’s of San Francisco. For the past half-century, Edith's life was dedicated to the craft of ceramics and the skill of the artisan. This passion, along with the legacy of her work in stoneware clay body and glaze development, gives Heath its unique place in ceramics today. As a result of Edith’s timeless and unique design sense - many of her pieces live in the permanent collections of museums such as the MOMA in New York City.
Values //
Edith Heath founded Heath Ceramics with a strong social point of view about the products her company made - simple, good things for good people. Today we are faced with new economic and environmental issues, business challenges and politics. We remain a small local manufacturer in order to be able to stay true to our values and the products we produce. As a privately owned company, our goal is to make responsible and holistic decisions for the long-term benefit of our customers and our employees, led by a focus on supporting great design and craft.
Local Manufacturing //
We believe that the craft of manufacturing has, to a great extent, been lost as a value in American culture, and strive to retain it. We also believe that it greatly influences and enables good design. All facets of our production are executed in our Sausalito factory and blend a mechanized process with hand craftsmanship to obtain the highest quality product. We want to change the relationship that customers have with things they buy by making tangible the process, people, and values that make their products. Local manufacturing has social and cultural rewards in bringing pride to a community and we like to think of Heath Ceramics as the “farmer’s market” option for dinnerware and tile.
The Real Cost //
The price of our products reflects the actual cost of producing products in a responsible manner. Products manufactured in the United Stated must comply with strict environmental standards and we go further with our stringent recycling and reuse programs. Our staff is fairly compensated, receives full health care benefits, has retirement benefits available and workers compensation coverage etc. We would be the first to agree that it’s an expensive way to produce products, but we also believe that if you’re going to “talk the talk” you need to “walk the walk”. When we buy products that have been outsourced to other parts of the world that don’t share our social and environmental values, we can’t be sure that manufacturers are following the same rules that we ourselves have deemed important - and that’s typically what’s reflected in the cheaper price.
Products that Last a Lifetime //
Our goal is to produce a product that will resist trends and be loved and functional over your lifetime, even passed on to the next generation. To us, this is the definition of good design and is the reason some of our products have been in continuous production for over 60 years. In a society that has become accustomed to a very short life for most products, our goal is the opposite. We take pride in longevity of our ware and tile, and design new colors and styles to complement existing collections, not replace them.
Environmental Impact //
Our sustainability goals date back to Edith’s proprietary clay body development. Our clay bodies require one firing as opposed to the more typical two firings, and are fired at a lower temperature than are customarily used to reach the same levels of durability. Edith was being frugal and resourceful in 1946 - qualities she learned from growing up in the Great Depression. This same motivation inspired her to make products with longevity, designed right the first time, produced with thought and ultimately reducing waste and limiting the “cheap and easy” mentality. Today, we’re proud to make products in the US - geographically it’s closest to where our materials originate and where our products are put to use. Our list goes on and on - the common theme being that we work hard to do things in a holistic manner, thoughtful and resourceful from the beginning…that’s our “green story”.
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The Big Picture //
If you run a company by a spreadsheet, there’s a good chance you’ll miss many important ideas and tangible objects. In our case, we could forget that the primary reason we come to work every day is to make great tile and dinnerware – but we don’t.
Our goals of sustaining local manufacturing, creating high quality, well designed products, maintaining a fair and responsible workplace for our employees and reducing our environmental impact helps us set our financial goals and business model, not the other way around; caring about all aspects of a business, translates to the products we make.
We strive to become a model for US manufacturing -- inspiring designers to look towards domestic production and inspiring US manufacturers to think creatively about their business models, as well as the value of quality design. Ultimately, we believe a local, holistic and sustainable business offers greater long-term rewards than can ever be achieved in chasing higher short-term profits by sending manufacturing oversees.