Jon Hedu was an American designer and inventor born in Canton, Ohio. He graduated from McKinley High School, Canton, Ohio, in 1931 and attended the University of Ohio where he received a degree in art ca. 1935, when he began work at the Watertown Manufacturing Company.

At Watertown in the 1940s he worked on designs for the melamine "Watertown Ware," tableware for use by the military, before he himself served in the United States Navy. Hedu returned to Watertown Manufacturing where, in 1946, he was instrumental in launching the first commercial line of melamine tableware. According to researcher Christopher Geoffrey McPherson, “versions of ‘Watertown Ware’ [were] sold to the public after World War Two (as early as August 1945).” In 1946 Hedu designed the "Lifetime" melamine dinnerware line, a set of which is in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Subsequently, he designed for Watertown the "Monterey," "Balmoral," and "Woodbine" dinnerware lines.

Hedu was also an inventor, contributing to at least 14 patents between 1942 and 1974. He began designing new kinds of fasteners for Watertown Manufacturing (in the early 1960s?), and continued with new designs after he left the company in the mid-1960s.

He is also known for the Hedu plastic clasp fastener, which he first submitted for a patent in 1963 while still with Watertown. The patent was granted in 1966 (#3,251,110), with another for a modified design in 1974 (#3,844,000). This type of fastener is now widely used for everything from children’s car seats to bicycle helmets.

Sources:

McPherson, Christopher Geoffrey, “Biographical Timeline of Jon Hedu” online at http://www.plasticliving.com/lifetime/bio.html (accessed Oct 14, 2011)

Museum of Modern Art webpage, http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=2103 (accessed Oct 14, 2011)

Watertown Book of Plastics (Watertown, CT: Watertown Manufacturing Company, 1945), on line at http://www.archive.org/details/TheWatertownBookOfPlastics (accessed Oct 17, 2011)

“Watertown Woodbine: Ivy Simply Beautiful Melmac by Jon Hedu,” at http://www.blogtopsites.com/outpost/5c41551fddd3ef271b6147c2907da6e5