A great M.O.M. and maven of moxie, Eva Zeisel continues to makes waves in modern design with her signature curves and independent spirit.
By Caroline Kooshoian
27 May 2005
The artist at Dining by Design representing Crate & Barrel with her "Classic Century" dinnerware, 2005. Talisman K. Brolin photograph courtesy of Hillwood Museum.
Zeisel designed these tables for Dune's 2004 ICFF party. Photograph courtesy of Core77.
With a current survey at the Hillwood Museum & Gardens in Washington D.C. and a launch by Crate & Barrel of her “Classic Century” dinnerware, Eva Zeisel, at 98, is finally on the road to becoming a household name designer. Achieving that mass recognition goes hand in hand with creating objects for the masses, something Zeisel’s done since the 1930s. Long, long before the Targets of the world even existed, much less popularized the democratization of design, Zeisel anticipated the trend by delivering her signature sensual curves through Sears, Roebuck, and The Hall China Company.
But something bigger than bringing great design to common people makes Eva Zeisel a Mother of Modern. The grace, beauty and playfulness of Zeisel’s ceramics have inspired generations of designers well outside the realm of pottery. Industrial designer Karim Rashid calls Zeisel, “My surrogate design mother and idol of sensual form.” And it's obvious that the two share a similar taste. Both create in rounded, humanistic curves and a sensual organic style that makes ordinary, mundane objects extraordinary and inviting. “Eva has contributed a sense of quality, beauty, and romanticism to everyday objects. Every object that we use, touch, see, or engage should have these higher forms of moxie,” says Rashid.
Moxie. It’s a good word to describe the artist and her work. “She’s a soft loving person with a very warm heart, but boy I’ll tell you she’s as tough as they come. No doubt about it,” says Bob Borden. He’s VP of Creative and Design at Nambè, the modern accessories maker Zeisel began working with when Borden dialed directory assistance to call her in 1997. Zeisel was already in her late 80s but ready to start new projects with a new manufacturer. “She’s got a real zest and passion for life and is constantly engaged in it, creating. As much as anything, that’s probably her most outstanding achievement,” says Borden.
And it’s something that translates well in her work, which is often described as having a calm, warm softness with determined style and indelible presence.
Born to a family of intellectuals in 1906 Budapest, Eva Amalia Stricker’s focus on the arts took several twists and turns of fate. In 1925, she visited the Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes and discovered the virtue of functional arts from the point of view of modernist architect Le Corbusier. She’d been studying painting at Hungary’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but after her visit abandoned that education to become a potter. (This pleased her feminist mother who felt that Eva should pursue a profession with a better means for earning income than painting offered.) But Zeisel’s rise to fame did not come with the simple choice to change her focus. Working in Berlin and then Ukraine (where she moved with her first husband, physicist Alexander Weissberg) Zeisel ran and updated the workings of the ceramics industry in the Soviet Union until May of 1936, when without warning, she was arrested and confined to Soviet prison on charges of being part of a conspiracy to kill Josef Stalin. Sixteen months later, although many other people accused in the plot were executed, Zeisel was freed with as little knowledge or understanding as accompanied her arrest. She fled Vienna, and six months later went to New York with Hans Zeisel, who would become her second husband, her first marriage having dissolved. In New York, Zeisel established herself and began working as an industrial ceramics teacher at the Pratt Institute. It was during her time at Pratt that Zeisel developed her signature style and began creating families of pieces, like her groupings of vases and casserole dishes, for the mass market.
"Classic Century" covered vegetable dish, teapot, covered sugar bowl and creamer. Photograph courtesy of Royal Stafford Tableware Limited.
Glazed porcelain prototypes for bellybutton inspired Modular Ceramic Wall Dividers, 1958. Photograph by Brent C. Brolin courtesy of Hillwood Museum.
Zeisel in a silk wrap designed by a friend, about 1929. Photograph courtesy of Hillwood Museum through Eva Zeisel Archives.
It’s a style she continues to perfect. “One of her greatest attributes is that she’s kept a very distinct look, feel and aesthetic of her work in whatever she’s done from ceramic salt and pepper shakers to furniture. That discipline and dedication to keeping true to her aesthetic and passion has been what’s made her more unique than anything else. A lot of designers may want to go follow what’s happening in trends or usage of materials but not Eva,” says Borden.
In Europe, Zeisel had become the first woman to join the Potters' Guild. Once in New York, she became the first woman to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, and the person credited with designing the first all-white modernist dinnerware, a design commissioned by the MoMA with Castleton China to debut at her 1946 solo show. These successes gave Zeisel prominence in a collector’s world of modern enthusiasts who embraced her balloon-like, delicate forms. Such shapes today are common in modern design but at the time, they flew in the face of the pared-down, straight lined coolness espoused by the Bauhaus school.
Now, Zeisel’s pieces are admired well outside the secret world of serious collectors, and for that the artist is grateful. As Borden explained, “Eva does not want her work to be looked at seriously, she wants it to be a part of someone’s life that brings beauty to their surroundings.” Her work is playful and round and begging to be used, not just admired from behind a glass case. That aspect of interaction holds as the signature twist Zeisel gave to modernism and continues to pass on.
Caroline Kooshoian is an Editor at Pure Contemporary.
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