We’ve never been very good at disguising our borderline obsession with Heath Ceramics. Comforting beauty, earthy stroke-able glazes, time-tested forms of voluptuous proportions, all wrapped up in a sunny Sausalito origin story. Frankly irresistible. In darker moments we return to the desaturated photo of founder Edith Heath in a glorious dress and necklace, overseeing her studio filled with ceramics ready for sale. And everything feels a bit brighter.
Edith Heath, who founded Heath Ceramics in Sausalito in 1948
Brighter still and great news for like-minded fan(atic)s: Heath is launching lighting. On sale this week online, and in store from its San Francisco and Los Angeles showrooms, the lighting collection consists of two sizes of table lamp and one pendant, in two different glazes. Each piece is hand-thrown and glazed in the Heath Clay Studio, the creative heart and experimental engine of the brand, which is based in Heath San Francisco’s Boiler Room.
Stack Table lamp Wide, Hickory and Barley, $650
Bloom pendants, Zinnia and Sunflower Gloss, $500 each
The Clay Studio has been a hot house of artistic explorations under Heath’s creative director Tung Chiang. Since 2012, Chiang has released limited-edition collections from the Clay Studio as numbered Design Series projects. The lighting is an evolution of his experiments with using clay for light fixtures from the third Design Series back in 2015. He describes his initial feeling that clay was an unusual material to hold light, given its weight and opacity.
Stack Table lamp Small, Oat and Penny Green, $500
Almost a decade later, Chiang and his team of ceramicists have cracked it – not literally. The table lights and pendants are cleverly glazed with a gradient, which gives the appearance of translucency, even when the light is switched off. Switched on, the pendants emit a warming glow, while the table lamps have a pleasingly playful, dappled light, inspired by Chiang’s childhood memories growing up in Hong Kong: ‘They remind me of catching fireflies in my hands then loosening my fingers to let their light shine through,’ he says.
Heath Clay Studio lighting is on display and for sale in its showrooms and online at heathceramics.com
Stack Table lamp Small, Hickory and Barley, $500
Stack Table lamp Wide, Oat and Penny Green, $650
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