Happy 103rd birthday Eva Zeisel!

[Feraud]

A living design legend. :eusa_clap

Born in Budapest in 1906, Eva Stricker entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at age 17, intending to become a painter, but her mother prevailed upon her to learn some trade whereby she could earn a living, the world of fine art being chancy. So Eva apprenticed herself to a traditional potter and began learning her trade. The life of the apprentice in any of the trades was not always easy or pleasant, but Eva persisted and soon graduated to journeyman status. Just a year after that her work was displayed at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial, where she won an honorable mention. By then she was working as a designer in the Kispester Factory in Budapest. She then advertised in the trade papers that she was a qualified journeyman seeking a position and received several responses. When asked recently why she chose the particular one she did she replied, "Because it was the furthest from home." She wanted to travel and widen her experience of the world and at the same time increase her skills. She moved to Schramberg, Germany,where she acquired skills in all phases of industrial production and became one of the first (and certainly the first woman) to move the ceramic arts into contemporary mass production.


Schramberg tea set & cake plate

She later moved to Berlin and to other factories in Hamburg and throughout Europe. In 1932 she went to Russia on vacation in order to experience the new artistic and social movements there, as did many other idealistic young artists and intellectuals. As an experienced industrial designer she was soon offered a position assisting in the modernization of the ceramic industry, where her creativity and dynamism stood her well. She traveled to many parts of Russia in order to understand and coordinate efforts to create a central manufactory which would make products for the homes of the everyday citizenry. Her efforts were recognized, and she was soon transferred to the Lomonosov factory in Leningrad (the former Imperial Porcelain Factory). This in turn led to her appointment as Artistic Director for the Porcelain and Glass Industries for the entire country.

In 1936, however, she was caught up in one of the Stalinist purges, accused of plotting against the life of Stalin. She was imprisoned in the NKVD prison for 16 months, most of the time in solitary confinement. She was subjected to early forms of brainwashing, torture, and the constant possibility that each day would be her last. (Arthur Koestler, a lifelong friend, based his book Darkness at Noon on her prison experiences.)

Then one day she was unexpectedly led out of her cell to what she feared was to be her execution but was instead put on a train to Austria in the clothes she was standing in. Just as the reason for her imprisonment was never really known, so is the reason for her release. (More details of Zeisel's Russian experience at our Membership Benefits page.)

Once in Austria, she left on the last train out at the time of the Anschluss and went to England, where she married Hans Zeisel, who had waited seven years for her. In 1938 they went to New York where they settled permanently.

In 1939 she created the department of ceramic arts industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she taught until 1952.

One of her first designs in the U.S. was for Sears, Roebuck. She has since designed for Hall China, Red Wing China, Castleton China, Norleans Meito (Japan), Western Stoneware, Hyalyn, Phillip Rosenthal (Germany), Mancioli (Italy), Federal Glass, Heisey Glass, Noritake (Japan), Nikkon Toki (Japan), and almost too many others to mention.

Eva Zeisel has received many honors for her outstanding achievements, beginning with her selection in 1942 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to design a line of fine porcelain dinnerware for the Castleton China Company of Pennsylvania. The designs were not completed and produced until 1945, due to wartime restriction, but were presented at a one-woman show at MoMA in 1947.

1982 she received a senior award from the National Endowments for the Arts and was the subject of a touring exhibition sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Montréal, in 1984.
1988 - Zeisel was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Arts, London
1991 - awarded an honorary doctorate by the Parson New School, New York
1998 - received the Binns Metal from the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University NY, for Excellence in Ceramic Art.
2000 - received the Industrial Design Society of America Bronze Apple Award.
2001 - made an Honorary Member of the American Ceramics Society.
2001 - a street in Schramberg , Germany designated EvaZeiselStrasse.
2002 - given the Living Legend Award at Pratt Institute, New York.
2002 - received the Russell Wright Award for Design Excellence
2004 - Awarded the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary
2004 - awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Craft and Design, Budapest, Republic of Hungary
2004 - named an Honorary Royal Designer by the Royal Designers for Industry, London, a part of the Royal Society of Arts (the highest award given to a non-British subject)
2005 - given an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design
2005 - received the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, followed by
2006 - luncheon at the White House with Laura Bush
2006 - received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Bon Appetit Magazine


Eva Zeisel

Her works are in the permanent collections of Brohan Museum, Germany; the British Museum; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Montréal; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Brooklyn, Metropolitan, Dallas, Knoxville, Milwaukee, Hillwood (Washington, D.C.), the Erie (NY), and Mingei International (San Diego) museums in the United States, among others. She has had retrospective exhibitions in dozens of museums in the U.S. and abroad and has lectured widely.


Teakettle for Chantal

Her recent works include designs for Zsolnay Factory in Pecs and Kispester-Granit in Budapest, Hungary, as well as the American firms of KleinReid (New York), Nambe (New Mexico), the Orange Chicken Gallery (New York), MGlass (New York), Acme Studios (Hawaii), and Royal Stafford China (England) for Crate and Barrel in the U.S. and firms in 9 other countries throughout the world. The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum and other fine organizations have issued new releases of some of her early designs in new glazes and colors, always supervised by Zeisel. And to celebrate her 100th birthday, Zeisel designed her first teakettle, for Chantal, of Texas.

http://www.evazeisel.org/default.htm

A thank you to my wife for turning me on to Eva's amazing work.

 

[Hamilton_Honey]

Good post!

One year I was completely broke and I had recently made up with baby sister. I gave her my complete service of Eva's Fantasy pattern including several serving pieces and the coffee set.

She still loves me for that

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