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(photo: Talisman Brolin)
Eva Zeisel died over the weekend at the age of 105. For those unfamiliar with her work, Hungarian artist Eva Zeisel managed to amaze + inspire with her hundreds of pieces that were all about curves. (At 103 she was still designing.)
An artist known for her unique approach as a ceramicist, she led a very interesting life up until the end. Having created Pratt Institute’s ceramics arts industrial design department in 1939 Brooklyn, as the first to disregard ceramics as crafts and where Zeisel taught into the early Fifties, she went on to make everyday objects beautiful (her trademark), especially her reinterpretation of the ‘formal dining setting’.
Adopting sensual curves, they often mimicked the human body. A lot of her work also lent itself to the shape of birds, a nod to Hungarian folk art. In Eva’s hands, a salt and pepper shaker set became a lot more. They become two organic forms eager to entangle themselves in a lover’s embrace
and even a 2d piece was not immune to her touch
like this Tibetan Wool rug called ‘Dimpled Stimpled’.
She also worked in various other mediums. Besides ceramics, Eva also worked with metal, acrylic, wood, and glass. Just look at the beauty behind her ‘Mother + Daughter Trestle Table and Chair’ below.
Having worked for the likes of Sears and Castleton China early in her career to pieces becoming permanent fixtures in museum collections including the MOMA, to reissues of her pieces for contemporaries including Crate and Barrel, Room and Board and others, Zeisel will live on through her undeniably strong contribution to modern living as a whole.