Edith Heath, the rebel ceramist and ‘alchemist’ who redefined the modern home

Edith Heath at the wheel, circa 1960. Photograph: Courtesy of the Brian and Edith Heath/Heath Ceramics Collection, Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley.

For 75 years, no firm has embodied the ethos of casually upscale California design quite like Heath Ceramics. Founded immediately after the second world war by Edith Heath, a largely self-taught ceramicist and potter, the company revolutionized domestic ceramics, transforming the art form from stuffy tea sets to versatile, modern dinnerware.

Now, a new exhibition in Oakland celebrates Heath as a ceramicist, a chemist and an entrepreneur, one whose half-century career helped establish California as a site of mid-century modernism while elevating ceramics as a genre.