Ceramicist Helen Levi
The limited edition Helen Levi x Kismet drop takes the idea of being made for each other to the next level: a mug for you and a matching bowl for your dog. We talked with Helen about how her dog Billy empowered her, where she finds inspiration, and her pursuits outside of the studio.


If you’re comfortable talking about it, we’d love to hear the story of how you and your dog Billy, who passed away in 2022, met – or “how you Kismet.”
I've been obsessed with dogs my entire life – as long as I can remember. I grew up in Manhattan in a small apartment with two working parents, so it was never a possibility when I was a child to get a dog (although my parents knew that was my number one wish in life).
When I graduated college and was living on my own, I was determined to get a dog. I had an encounter with a dog on the street who was abandoned, and I brought the dog to a shelter because my apartment didn't allow pets, and then that dog got adopted. That really cemented for me that I was ready. So after that experience, I was just on Petfinder, and I was looking for a cattle dog because I had met a cattle dog who was very funny and seemed to have a sense of humor. I love that quality in animals. So my dog, Billy, was a cattle dog pit mix. I got him when he was nine weeks old, and I had him for a decade. He was with me through my whole twenties, and with me until my son was born. He stayed with me through such growth in my life. So it was very, very, very hard to lose him. And that was about two and a half years ago.
It's so incredible to have an animal that is with you through big life transitions, like moving or starting a relationship or becoming a mom.
Every single thing in my life was changing in my twenties – boyfriends, apartments, jobs – and Billy was the constant. By the time he passed, I was married, I had a baby, and my life was much more stable, but I really feel like he got me there, you know? And I did find it very unmooring when he passed because he had been just this incredible stability for me. So I felt very strange with him gone.
"I've been obsessed with dogs my entire life – as long as I can remember."
How did living with Billy enhance your life?
Anybody who loves a dog knows there's no other relationship like it; it's so unique. Sometimes people say, “Oh, well, you have a kid – did having a dog prepare you?” And I'm just not interested in comparing it, because I feel like the reason you love your pet is for the uniqueness of the relationship. It was just so special to me, and nothing will ever touch it.
What was the most surprising thing you learned from him?
I didn't really realize beforehand how much he was going to empower me to do things I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing as a young woman on my own. He was an 80-pound pit mix, and he was very sturdy, so I think he looked kind of intimidating. When I was 25 I drove by myself to Colorado to meet a friend, and was staying in random hotels alone, but I wasn't alone, because I had him.
When my business was growing and I was working in a big warehouse building, late at night by myself, I never felt scared because I had this kind of protector. And I think, looking back, he really empowered me to be independent in a way I doubt I would have felt comfortable being without him next to me.
Do you have any advice for someone who's grieving the loss of their pet?
The one piece of advice someone gave me when her dog passed was not to grieve them while they're still alive. And I remember that because Billy was starting to get older and having some health problems, and I was so stressed about losing him. So what she said really stuck with me. I've shared that advice with other friends who have aging pets, too: don't grieve them while they're still here. Really just enjoy your day to day life with them, because you'll have time to grieve them eventually. I think everyone can agree that they would have wished they had more time with their pet; and I certainly felt like 10 years was not enough with Billy. I wish it had been 20 or 30 or 40, but I bet however long it would have been, I would have felt like I wanted more time.

One of your colorways is named after Billy, which is such a cool legacy. Where do you typically draw inspiration from when coming up with patterns and designs?
When I made the first Billy mug, I was experimenting with these drifty glazes, and I pulled a mug out of the kiln, and my assistant said, “Oh my God, you made a Billy mug!” And I was like, “Oh shit!” I didn't realize what I’d done – it really was from my subconscious.
The story behind my beach collection, which has been my bestselling collection, is similar. I always used to take Billy to the beach before work to really exhaust him before a long day at the studio. I was going to the beach all year round – all weather, all seasons – and I was, again, just kind of experimenting with marbling, and a piece came out of the kiln that looked like the beach. But it's not like I sat down and said, “Let me make the beach today.”
So I find that my creative process is that I experiment a lot, and see what feels right. Things come to the surface unintentionally sometimes, and I actually love that. I love being surprised by experimentation, and that is kind of how I work.


Many artists fear that they’ll lose their connection to their craft when they make it their business. What’s been the hardest part of commercializing and scaling a ceramics business?
I feel incredibly lucky because I pretty much make what I want to make, and that's such a privilege. Occasionally I spend a lot of time on something that I'm really excited about, and then it doesn't really hit with people. And that's a bummer, because if it's not a hit, I can't really keep making it. So the best, of course, is when I'm really excited about the direction and the customer is, too, but it doesn't always align. So that's always just trial and error.
Sometimes I'll get kind of sick of making something because I've made too many, and then I'll just take a little break from it and bring it back later. The nice thing about my business being the scale that it is, is that I do have the flexibility to mix it up as much as I want. I can change course, which I do whenever I get burnt out on something.
What’s been the most rewarding part?
I know how lucky I am that I make what I want to make, and that's my job. I mean, that's incredible. I haven't gotten over that 11 years in. I feel like the whole thing is rewarding. I feel very lucky.
"My creative process is that I experiment a lot and see what feels right."
People are very particular about their mugs. In your opinion, what makes a good cup?
Well, there is no perfect mug, because, like you said, every single person has their own preference. I'm a tea drinker. I don't drink coffee at all. So for me, like an eight ounce mug is stupid, because you would never brew a cup of tea in an eight ounce cup. But coffee people often like the eight ounce cup because that's a normal amount of coffee for them. So I like a big mug. And actually my favorite mug is the size that I'm making for Kismet. I call it the daily mug – it’s not too big, not too small.
Is this the first time you’ve designed for dogs?
I have made dog things in the past, but I was really excited about the matching element of this project – for the dog and their parent. I think that's so fun! I wish I had thought of that before. Of all the dog bowls I made for Billy, I never made a matching piece, and I think it's so cute.
Did you approach this project differently than you would if the intended audience were a person?
I'm thinking about the human. We know the dogs don't care! It's very sweet that people want something special for their pet, but we know it's really for us.

If it wasn’t pottery, what would you be making?
I have a lot of harebrained schemes of other things I would do, but none of them are real. When I was a teen and growing up, I used to wonder, “What will my job be like? What office job will I have?” It just seemed so abstract. I just could never envision it. And I think that's probably why I ended up working for myself.
You volunteer as a court appointed special advocate for kids in the foster care system. What do you want other people to know about that work?
I appreciate you asking me about it. I've been doing it for about a year, and it came from a place that I think a lot of us can relate to – of feeling distraught about certain things going on in the world, and also feeling totally helpless, and feeling like one person's impact doesn't do that much. What can we do as one person? CASA has a long history. They've been around for 40, 50 years, and they really have the evidence that one person does make an impact in these one to one cases. It's so heartening to feel like you can actually help a situation.
With the first case that I was assigned, I'm certain that, because of me and my supervisors' involvement with these kids, they spent less time in foster care than they would have if we hadn't been involved. We were working to get them transferred to their grandmother's care, who lived in a different state. When kids are transferred out of state, there's a huge amount of paperwork and bureaucracy. It's a whole complicated endeavor, even though it's family. You would think it should be easy for a grandmother to get custody if her kids are in foster care, but it's really not. And so CASA gets involved a lot in these transfer cases, because they can become so slow, which is a shame, because there's a loving family member ready to take the kids. So my supervisor and I helped with all the paperwork, and I know that the process went faster because we were there to help.
It's cheesy, but it feels very good to see the impact of your work. CASA is a great program, and it's in every state, so you can be involved anywhere.

Shop the Helen Levi x Kismet drop while supplies last.
Photos courtesy of Helen Levi