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- Dr Eva Zeisel
- Also known as
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Dr Eva Zeisel
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primary name: Zeisel, Eva
- Details
- individual; ceramicist/glass worker/potter; academic/intellectual; Hungarian; American (USA); Female
- Life dates
- 1906-2011
- Biography
- Zeisel was born in Budapest, where she studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Art and was apprenticed to the Hungarian potters' guild before setting up her own pottery in 1925. She then worked for the Kispester Pottery in Budapest, joining the Schramberger Majolika Fabrik in the Black Forest, Germany, in 1928. There she produced geometric designs of great inventiveness and individuality. From 1930 to 1931 she worked in Berlin, leaving in 1932 for the Soviet Union, where she worked initially for the Lomonossov factory in Leningrad and then for the Dulevo factory near Moscow.
In 1939 Zeisel settled in New York, where she taught ceramic design at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, but it was her formal porcelain 'Museum Service' designed c. 1942-5 for the Museum of Modern Art and made by Castleton China that brought her widespread recognition. As a result she received the commission from Red Wing for an informal, inexpensive earthenware service named 'Town and Country' after the popular magazine. In the1950s she designed for a number of companies in Europe as well as America. During the 1960s and 1970s her work for commercial design was less frequent, but the 1980s and 1990s saw a flowering of new collections, including a range for Zsolnay in her native Hungary and a series of metal tableware for Nambé in New Mexico. She died on 30 December 2011, shortly after her 105th birthday.
- Bibliography
- Montreal 1984, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 'Eva Zeisel: Designer for Industry', exhibition catalogue
Mettlach 1989, Keramik-Museum, Schloss Ziegelberg, Eve Zeisel: Designerin für die Industrie', exhibition catalogue.
Lucie Young, 'Eva Zeisel', San Francisco 2003
Eva Zeisel, 'Eva Zeisel on Design: The magic language of things', (Overlook Press) 2004
Jean Richards and Brent C. Brolin, 'Eva Zeisel. A Soviet Prison Memoir', New York 2012 (eBook, avalaible for iPad, iPhone and Kindle)
Pat Kirkham (ed), 'Eva Zeisel: Life, Design, and Beauty', San Francisco 2013
Judy Rudoe, 'The "Magic Language" of Eva Zeisel', British Museum Magazine, No. 38, Autumn/Winter 2001, p. 35
