Edith Heath Tea Towel, "We Are Artists"

Regular price $29.95

This special limited production tea towel features a painting by Edith Heath We Are Artists, c. late-1930s. It has been produced in support of the exhibition, Edith Heath and Emily Carr: From the Earth and is available exclusively through the Gallery Store and Heath Ceramics. 

  • 100% Linen
  • 17.5 x 27 inches
  • Made in Europe

The Gallery Store would like to thank the Brian & Edith Heath Foundation and the Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley, for making this special offering possible.

In the 1930s, Edith Heath trained as an art teacher for children at the Chicago Teachers College. She later studied art and art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

It is likely Heath completed this painting in the late 1930s while employed by the Works Progress Administration, the signature program of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. This program provided jobs for more than eight million people who used their skills to bolster the public infrastructure during the darkest days of the Depression.

Through the program, Heath worked as an arts and crafts specialist and field supervisor. Her experiences at this time had lasting effects on her life and ceramics practice.

The Depression years of the thirties were probably the most important, satisfying years of my life, they sustain me whenever things are rough...In the midst of hunger and starvation, a cultural awakening took place that changed the economy and brought hope for a more human environment.
—Edith Heath, Oral history, UC Berkeley, 1995

We Are Artists, c. late-1930s
By Edith Heath
Watercolor on paper, 34cm x 50cm
Brian and Edith Heath/Heath Ceramics Collection, Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley