How Heather Edwards turns grief, joy, and clay into legacy
Heather Edwards didn’t plan on becoming a potter. At 14, she only signed up for a pottery class because her best friend refused to go alone. But the moment her hands met clay, something clicked—visceral, grounding, undeniable. Within two years, her father had built her a wheel in the basement, and she was learning to fire kilns and teach junior classes. What started as an after-school activity slowly became a lifelong practice—a rhythm that would carry her through decades of raising a family, building a business, and shaping stories in earth and fire.
Edwards’ early years were marked by a love for primitive firing techniques—Raku, burnishing, pit firings—methods that lent her work an ancient soul. But soon enough, art met reality. Art galleries closed. Markets changed. Kids needed feeding. She and her husband pivoted from one-of-a-kind pieces to a production line—mugs and bowls that paid the bills.
Yet even mass production carries intimacy in Edwards’ world. Customers return year after year, mourning broken mugs, searching for the same curve of handle, the same memory. “That connection brings me back to how significant this work really is,” she says.
Over the last few years, Edwards has become known for her custom cremation urns; each one a love letter in clay. Families arrive grieving, full of symbols and stories: kelp forests for a marine biologist, a goalie stance for a former NHL player, alpacas, and hummingbirds for a farmer’s wife. Edwards listens, then carves.
“It’s such an honour,” she says, voice catching. “The connection that happens when you do something that personal. It stays with you forever.”
What fuels Edwards is not just the clay, but the people who return to her year after year. Customers become kin. Studio events become reunions. She receives Instagram messages like, “I’m having coffee with you this morning,” paired with a photo of one of her mugs.
And when grief or injustice presses too hard, she returns to the wheel. Throwing becomes meditation. Clay, her equilibrium. “It’s always been with me,” she says.
Edwards rarely keeps her own work. Most of her mugs and bowls are functional seconds, pieces with small flaws that didn’t make it to the market, but there’s one piece that she couldn’t let go. It was a large jug, one she nearly smashed out of frustration. Instead, she carved a bird goddess into its side during a moment of self-discovery in her forties. The piece came to life. “I priced it so high no one would buy it,” she laughs. “And I’m so glad they didn’t.” Today, it sits above her wheel—a quiet sentinel, a reminder of the fire she’s carried all these years.
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