Cathy Bailey Goes to Washington!
by Maria Moyer, bureau chief
A few days ago, our very own Bureau Friend, Cathy Bailey (and her husband Robin Petravic) joined the exalted few who have enjoyed lunch with the First Lady at the White House.
Their company, HEATH Ceramics, is a well deserved and celebrated finalist in the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum, National Design Awards. They are being recognized for using design as a strategic tool in their mission and showing ingenuity in advancing the relationship between design and quality of life.
With my own home filled with HEATH plates, bowls, platters, and vases, I’m a bona fide HEATH fan. Together, Robin and Cathy, are doing something wonderful and worth watching. Here’s a peek at what makes them national-award material and great ambassadors for the Bureau of Friends.
Like Edith Heath, the artist who founded the company in 1941, Cathy and Robin are “designer makers.” They not only design HEATH products, as manufacturers, they control the making of their designs too. They have deep design backgrounds, which they deploy at HEATH with a respectful nod to Edith Heath’s artistic legacy. However, it is through their own design vision, that HEATH is more relevant today than ever.
The HEATH factory and studio was founded on post-Depression and war-time era values, that are still hallowed today: They are frugal—their facility creates very little waste and they look for material and energy efficiencies wherever they can, and they reinvest what they earn to improve the company. They share a passion for providing creative, meaningful work for themselves and their employees. This, is what drives them. As Cathy says, “manufacturing in the US is disappearing, and with it the satisfaction of making things. Our ability to try new designs and to contribute to the growing appreciation of craft. . . is deeply satisfying.” Ultimately, and very important to their design-appreciating collectors, they make things that are timelessly beautiful.
Cathy and I exchanged giddy emails on her flight from CA to DC (on wi-fi quipped Virgin, of course) and I barely let her deplane before I called to hear about lunch with Michelle Obama. Here are a few choice moments from our conversation:
Was being in the White House what you thought it would be? While we were excited and honored to go, I guess we expected that as political outsiders we might be allowed into some public parts of the White House with roped off areas that we could peer into. That still would have been thrilling. We were actually granted access to the whole first floor and walked freely through the Red Room, Green Room and the Blue Room. We ate lunch on china from the Bush, Truman and Eisenhower administrations.
The most profound moment was looking out of the window in the Blue Room and taking in that view. As I stood there, I thought about the world-shaping things that had transpired right there. I just took a moment and felt so pleased that design was being appreciated in the same space.
What was Michelle Obama like? She’s even more attractive in person and she has this genuine feeling about her. She made great eye contact, she was at ease and very real.
After talking to Cathy, I found a video of Michelle Obama speaking at the White House event. In her address, she quotes Albert Eienstein, as saying “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge . . .” with comic timing she added, “I think he knew what he was talking about.”
The Bureau wants you to be MORE materialistic
by Maria Moyer, bureau chief
Jennifer Van Der Meer gets us. In the first article written about the Bureau, Jennifer makes this provocative observation:
The Bureau of Friends seems to be cultivating the idea that as consumers, we are not materialistic enough. As a new departure they ask us to pay more attention to how things are made, and to have greater emotional attachment to the clothes and objects in our lives.
You’re so right, Jennifer. We’d like to see people relish what they buy, to know and care about where it comes from and to celebrate it.
Jennifer’s article here: http://tinyurl.com/nazrfs
Open for Business
By Maria Moyer, bureau chief
A few Sundays ago, at the Chez Panisse Edible School Yard kitchen in Berkeley, about twenty of us gathered to learn how to make beautiful things from the Alabama Stitch Book. Natalie Chanin regaled us with tales, as we practiced the depression-era sewing techniques used by artisans who make her exquisite designs for Alabama Chanin. Natalie’s stories, were about life–hers and the others before her–and, she related these stories to sewing, fabric, thread and physics.
To hear Natalie Chanin weave a tale is like eating a meal. In stark contrast, my trying to tell one of her stories is more like reading a recipe. But, dare to tell it, I will. Here goes:
During hot summer evenings in the South, Natalie’s friends and family would gather around the family home to eat, drink, tell stories on the porch and be together. On one of these evenings, Natalie’s grandfather set the children to the task of collecting sticks from around the yard.
After the children had secured their bounty, he asked them to each take and hold a stick–just one–with both hands. Then he asked them to, “break it.” As they easily snapped their twig in two, he added, “That stick is you. You, on your own.” While lightening bugs flashed and the night rolled in, the children listened intently, “Now, take as many sticks as you can hold in your hand, maybe five, and hold them together. And now break those,” he asked of the children. The tensile strength of the individual sticks held together as one made the task impossible. “This,” he said “is your family.”
This is the sentiment that brings Natalie and I together with others in the Bureau of Friends. Formalized over breakfast and a pinky swear in a Manhattan bistro, The Bureau of Friends, is now open for business and ready to help others do the good work. We are stronger together.
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