And let's go to our last story of the month with the theme Great Potters.
Edith Heath was an American ceramist who surprised the production of ceramics with a modern air and a pulsating alchemy in her experiments with clay.
Know this story.
Early Years
Edith was born into a Danish-American family in Ida Grove, Iowa, in 1911.
She moved to California when her husband Brian took a job with the Red Cross.
Just two years after taking her first pottery class, she had already won her first solo exhibition at the San Francisco Legion of Honor.
Heath Ceramics
Her success prompted her to quickly launch her own factory, Heath Ceramics, in 1948.
Major retailers began asking for tableware, which required Heath to develop ways to manufacture her pieces from her design rather than creating them by hand.
Heath Ceramics had the same anti-aristocratic principles as the Bauhaus of the 1920s, using scientific principles to make design accessible to California's growing middle class.
Successful Entrepreneur
Its "Coupe" line remains in demand and has been in constant production since 1948.
The "Rim" line, designed in 1960, as the name suggests, had an unglazed outer rim. This model was highly sought after by restaurants because the rim made it easier to transport the items more safely.
By 1949, Heath Ceramics was producing 100,000 pieces per year.
Industrial vs. Manual
Initially, her work gained little love from the establishment.
This is because Heath was fundamentally agnostic about the merits of machine versus hand production. She insisted that manufactured parts, developed from a hand-made prototype, could be just as aesthetically excellent as hand-crafted parts.
This generated so much antipathy that she was asked to leave the San Francisco Potters Association.
Idealism and Price
Heath has always had to deal with a tension between idealism and price.
Her pieces weren't cheap, yet she often spoke about being an egalitarian designer who made work for a casual, informal lifestyle rather than the elite.
Experimenting with Clay
Something remarkable about her personality is that she was fascinated by eutectics, the science of mixing various metals into clay to alter its properties.
The Heaths would drive around the West Coast, gathering buckets of native clays to take home and experiment with. This contrasted sharply with their centuries-old use of white clay, most of it imported.
Her rebellious spirit rejected the use of materials traditionally used to make fine tableware. She preferred to use native clays that evoked the landscape.
Architectural Tiles and Alchemy
As her career progressed, Heath began making tiles and building materials, winning industrial design awards for her experiments.
After a 1991 Oakland firestorm killed 25 people and destroyed thousands of homes, she developed new ideas for fire-resistant construction, demonstrating her entrepreneurial streak, innovative mindset, and creativity.
Given this story, I leave you with the question: When was the last time you tried something new?