Eva Zeisel
“To create things to be used, to be loved, to be with, to give as a gift, to fit into a normal day, to match a festive mood, to be proud of, is to create the culture of life that surrounds us.”
Eva Striker Zeisel created for Hall China what the New York Times described as “elegant, eccentric designs for dinnerware…that helped to revolutionize the way Americans set their tables”
Born in Budapest in 1906, Zeisel trained under a master potter and attended classes at Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Her early positions were in the factories of Berlin, Hamburg, and in Russia. During her years in Russia she quickly rose through the ranks of pottery design and held the prestigious position of artistic director of the state-run china and glass industry.
In 1936, Eva was erroneously charged with plotting to assassinate Stalin and spent 16 months, most of it in solitary confinement, in a Russian prison. This period of her life is recounted in her memoir Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memoir. Arthur Koestler’s 1941 novel, Darkness at Noon is also based on her experience.
The Nazi rise to power in the late 30s forced Eva and her husband to flee Austria. They arrived in the United States with only $64. Eva began teaching industrial design at New York’s Pratt Institute and it was while she was here, in the early 50s, that she was commissioned by the Hall China Company to create the dinnerware, “Tomorrow's Classic." Production began in 1952 and the curvy designed ware was an instant hit. In 1955, Zeisel created a second line for Hall called "Century" with production beginning in 1956. Many years later she commented to a Newsday reporter that the world did not need all these dishes. “They’re cold, they’re hard, and we have to wash them. But paper plates will never bring a family together” or “teach children to say, ‘May I be excused?’ Obviously, it’s a cultural need and it’s the designer who makes them festive.” Eva often described her work as the “playful search for beauty.”
Eva never stopped. She continued to design until her death in 2011 at the age of 105. Her 90-year career span resulted in over 100,000 dinnerware designs for several different potteries. Her work is in permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the British Museum, MoMA and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had the first one-woman show at MoMA and was honored at the White House. The Morris Museum, Morristown New Jersey, is currently running an exhibition of her work called Eva Zeisel: A Century of Designing Elegance (Jan.4 – Oct. 4, 2020).
For additional information:
Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty. Ted Talk
Eva Zeisel on Design: The Magic Language of Things. By Zeisel, 2004
Throwing Curves (video)
Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memior. Zeisel,
