Catherine Bailey

Catherine Bailey | Heath Ceramics

In 2003 husband and wife team Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey purchased Heath Ceramics, a more than 60-year-old maker of dinnerware and tile, with an idea to build a more satisfying and tangible design life, one that included bringing together the processes of designing and making.

Bailey moves Heath’s creative direction forward, while honoring the history and craft that Edith Heath pioneered in the late 1940s. With past product design experience for companies like Nike, Burton Snowboards, Microsoft and Palm, and previous owner of One & Co., a design consultancy in San Francisco, she oversees all design and points of interaction with customers, in addition to sharing responsibility for setting the overall company vision and direction.

Heath Ceramics creates products of good design and believes in building and supporting a creative community of designers and makers, with a retail store and factory in the original Sausalito, CA location, retail stores in Los Angeles and the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco and recently a retail store and future tile factory in the urban core of San Francisco’s Northeast Mission District. Heath is recognized as a design leader and model for bringing together manufacturing, design and responsible business practices as a combination leading to long-term business viability. This includes a Henry award from the California Museum of Design in 2007, Bon Appetitʼs Designer of the Year award in 2008 and two Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award finalist acknowledgements in 2009 and 2011.