Cedric Mitchell for Heath Ceramics Featured in Architectural Digest
by cedric mitchell
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Architectural Digest featured Cedric Mitchell’s collection for Heath Ceramics in “Glass Is Red-Hot: Here Are 6 New Collections to Know,” published May 20, 2022.
The feature recognized a body of handblown glass that moved between function, sculpture, and personal expression. Jewel-toned cocktail mixers and tumblers appeared alongside elegant bottles and vases shaped by bold color, simple geometry, and the playful influence of Memphis design.
For Cedric Mitchell Design, the collection marked an important moment in the development of a larger visual language. Glass was not presented only as a craft material. It became a way to shape the table, the room, and the energy of everyday life.
Read the Architectural Digest feature.
Emerald and amber cocktail mixer and tumblers by Cedric Mitchell for Heath Ceramics. Photo by Lisa Ferkel, courtesy of Heath Ceramics.
Architectural Digest Names Cedric Mitchell Among Six Glass Collections to Know
Architectural Digest selected the Heath Ceramics collaboration for a story about the renewed energy surrounding contemporary glass.
The article focused on designers and artists expanding what glass can do through functional objects, experimental processes, color, and form. Cedric Mitchell’s work appeared alongside collections by Bianco Light & Space for Agmes, Colony and Deborah Czeresko, Sophie Lou Jacobsen, Dana Arbib, and Annika Jarring.
The inclusion placed Cedric Mitchell for Heath Ceramics within a broader movement of contemporary designers challenging and extending traditional glassmaking.
Architectural Digest described the collection through its elegant bottles, sculptural vases, jewel-toned cocktail stirring glasses, and tumblers with a restrained Memphis influence.
Cedric Mitchell for Heath Ceramics
Heath Ceramics has long been known for material integrity, California craft, and objects designed for daily life. Its collaborations beyond clay create space for artists and designers to bring new materials into the Heath world without losing the company’s commitment to function and longevity.
Cedric Mitchell began collaborating with Heath in 2021. The partnership brought handblown glass into conversation with Heath’s ceramics, furniture, interiors, and approach to the home.
The collection was not designed as decoration alone. The objects were meant to be poured from, held, arranged, and lived with.
Explore Heath Collects: Cedric Mitchell.
The Object Lounge
Heath presented the collaboration through Cedric Mitchell: The Object Lounge, an environment built around color, material, and the relationship between functional and decorative objects.
The Object Lounge brought together work developed through travel, artist residencies, and continued experimentation in the studio. Bottles, vessels, glassware, and sculptural forms were allowed to interact as a collection rather than exist as isolated products.
That shift mattered.
It created a space where glass could behave like design, sculpture, tableware, and architecture at the same time. The objects changed the atmosphere around them while still remaining useful.
The Object Lounge also anticipated the direction Cedric Mitchell Design would continue to explore through collectible objects, lighting, furniture, drinkware, and complete environments.
Jewel-Toned Cocktail Glassware
The Architectural Digest image featured a cocktail mixer and tumblers in saturated emerald and amber glass.
Color gave the functional objects their presence. The pieces were designed to hold a drink, but they also shaped the mood of the table before anything was poured.
The jewel tones changed with light and movement. In the hand, the glass became more than a transparent container. It became a small piece of architecture built around ritual, gathering, and use.
That relationship between function and expression remains central to Cedric Mitchell Design glassware today.
Explore Cedric Mitchell Design glassware.
Bottles, Vases and Restrained Memphis Design
Alongside the cocktail pieces, the Heath collection included bottles and vases that translated postmodern influence into refined handblown forms.
The reference to Memphis design appeared through geometry, color relationships, repetition, and playful proportion. The work did not copy the past. It filtered those ideas through Cedric Mitchell’s experience with glass, graffiti, hip-hop, streetwear, midcentury modern design, and 1990s visual culture.
Architectural Digest called the result restrained Memphis. That description captured the balance inside the collection.
The forms carried personality without losing clarity. The color was bold, but the objects remained grounded enough to live naturally alongside Heath’s ceramics and home furnishings.
From Tulsa to Los Angeles
Cedric Mitchell began working with glass in Tulsa, Oklahoma, before moving to Los Angeles and establishing Cedric Mitchell Design.
His path into glass grew through education, apprenticeship, teaching, residencies, and years of studio experimentation. Music was an early creative foundation, and its influence remains visible in the rhythm, repetition, movement, and improvisation of the work.
The Heath collaboration brought those influences into a national design context while preserving the handmade character of the objects.
Architectural Digest’s recognition helped introduce that story to a wider audience interested in interiors, collectible design, contemporary craft, and new approaches to glass.
Glass as Personal Expression
Heath described Cedric Mitchell’s work as an electric exploration of glass as a medium for personal expression.
That idea sits at the center of the collection.
Technique provides the structure, but the work is ultimately about voice. Color can hold memory. Form can carry rhythm. A useful object can still communicate identity, humor, and culture.
The collection showed that functional glassware and vessels do not need to disappear into the background. They can bring energy into the home while participating in everyday rituals.
Expanding Access and Representation in Glass
At the time of the Architectural Digest feature, Cedric Mitchell was also recognized for his work as an instructor and as a team member of Crafting the Future, a nonprofit supporting access to hands-on craft education.
That connection between design, education, and representation is significant. Visibility in major design publications gives emerging artists and makers another reference point for what a sustainable creative path can look like.
The work exists as an object, but it also participates in a larger effort to expand who is seen, supported, collected, and remembered within contemporary craft and design.
The Cedric Mitchell and Heath Ceramics Story Continues
The Architectural Digest feature captured an early chapter of an ongoing relationship between Cedric Mitchell and Heath Ceramics.
Heath continues to present Cedric Mitchell’s work through seasonal collections and its designer archive. The forms have continued to evolve, but the foundation remains consistent: bold color, material intelligence, useful objects, and glass made with purpose.
View current Cedric Mitchell work at Heath Ceramics.
Read the Architectural Digest Feature
“Glass Is Red-Hot: Here Are 6 New Collections to Know” places Cedric Mitchell for Heath Ceramics within a defining moment for contemporary glass and collectible design.