Eva Zeisel, (1906-2011)

Born in Hungary, Eva Zeisel worked in Germany and Russia before coming to the United States in 1938, later obtaining a teaching post at Pratt Institute in New York. The strongly opinionated Zeisel gained stature in the design field through her teaching, lecturing, and writing. Following her creation of Stratoware (ca. 1941) for Sears, Roebruck & Co., Zeisel received her first major commission in tableware in this country in 1942-1943, when Louis E. Hellmann of Castleton China asked her to design a dinner service. The commission was sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, and the vessels were to be overtly modern and the ultimate in educated good taste. Museum, as the service was called, was marked as the first truly modern example of American-made fine china. To create Museum, Zeisel drew from her extensive knowledge of prewar European modernist ceramics, especially German and Scandinavian designs, but the result was new and innovative. Made from warm, white-colored porcelain and less geometric than its European antecedents, Zeisel’s design was a study in graceful curves. Once production began in 1945, Museum quickly became famous among critics around the world as the epitome of casual American modernism. 

Like her contemporary Russel Wright, Zeisel took full advantage of her notoriety to gather other interesting commissions. Less formal than Museum were the multicolored Town and Country and Tritone lines, as well as the clear glass shape Prestige. Although they were more curvilinear than Museum, Zeisel’s designs for Tomorrow’s Classic and Century offered the customer the elegance of the earlier service at a lower cost. To Zeisel’s dismay most American women found her work in its undecorated state too stark. Consequently, manufacturers applied a host of decal decorations and glazes to her shapes. 

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