OMCA on Friday announced a new $1 million endowment along with the donation to the museum of hand-thrown vessels, iconic mid-century dinnerware, glaze and clay body tests, and other pieces by the celebrated ceramicist Edith Heath. Highlights include hand-formed works from the period of her landmark 1944 exhibition at the Legion of Honor, and early production pieces created for her collaboration with Gump’s department store, the museum said.
Edith Heath was born in Iowa in 1911 and moved to San Francisco in 1942. She died in 2005. Heath established a production facility in Sausalito in the 1940s to produce her distinctly modern body of work. Her signature style broke with the fine porcelain aesthetic of earlier dinnerware, and she embraced sourcing materials for her work from local California mines and other sites.
The addition of 100 pieces spanning five decades of production will double OMCA’s collection of Heath’s work and bolster the museum’s already robust holdings in California craft and decorative artists. The new collection will be incorporated into OMCA’s art and history galleries as well as integrated into “gallery-based learning programs that explore artistic process, material experimentation, and innovation,” the museum said.
“This extraordinary gift deepens OMCA’s ability to tell the story of California creativity and innovation,” said Executive Director and CEO Lori Fogarty in a statement. “Edith Heath transformed ceramics by uniting art, science, and industry, and her work helped define a distinctly California approach to modern living. We are profoundly grateful to The Brian and Edith Heath Foundation for entrusting these works to OMCA and for their generous support of their ongoing care.”