Heath Crosses the Bridge - NYTimes.com The Sausalito, Calif., factory and outlet store of Heath Ceramics, the influential modernist pottery company founded by Edith Heath in 1948, has been a destination for design fans in the Bay Area and beyond. But now San Franciscans need not cross the Golden Gate Bridge to get their Heath fix. Its new location at 2900 18th Street, which officially opens on Sunday, contains retail space as well as a factory devoted to tile manufacturing. The factory is still under construction and will open in the fall. Heath's building, which once housed a commercial linen supply business and laundry, is big enough to allow the company to stage workshops and other events. The first of these is the July 14 opening of an exhibition by the Japanese master potter Akio Nukaga, at which Sylvan Mishima Brackett of Peko-Peko will cook in Heath's demonstration kitchen - which itself doubles as a homelike showcase for the company's ceramic tiles and dinnerware, as well as the products from like-minded companies that include David Mellor, Weck, and Commune, the Los Angeles design firm that also collaborated with Heath on the new space. Heath's husband-and-wife owners, Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey, were faced with a good news-bad news scenario in Sausalito: families were arriving on weekends to check out the factory and shop, but the existing space couldn't accommodate either the numbers of visitors or the programs that Bailey and Petravic wanted to offer to make people feel more connected to the process of production. "What we loved about opening the factory in Sausalito [to visitors] was that people told us they'd never thought about how the plates were made," Petravic explained. Although the tile factory is moving to San Francisco, the Sausalito factory will continue to produce dinnerware. And Heath's San Francisco location in a former industrial neighborhood reinforces that connection. As Bailey said, people "want to know how things are made. They want to see tangible things - there's less and less of that today. To that end, a viewing court will look into the tile factory and will also contain a mural that illustrates Heath's design history. The mural's colors were developed in collaboration with YOLO Colorhouse, the Portland, Ore., company that produces environmentally friendly paints, which are used in the Heath space. Because this is San Francisco, a Blue Bottle Coffee Cafe will open next to the viewing court on July 14. And also because this is San Francisco, Heath plans to add a restaurant next year. Watch that space.