Eva Zeisel was continually intrigued by what she called her "playful search for beauty." A person of delightfully defiant spirit, the designer was just beginning her career when she declared war on the fashionable avant-garde. "I didn't accept the purism of modern design," she said. "In my definition, if it gave beauty to the eye, it was beauty."
Zeisel was born Eva Striker in Budapest in 1906. Her father ran a textile factory and her mother was an outspoken feminist and one of the first women to earn a doctorate at the University of Budapest. It was through her mother's urging that Zeisel switched from studying painting at the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts to pursue the more practical career of ceramist. She apprenticed herself to a potter at a porcelain factory, an unusual path for an educated woman at that time. Zeisel persisted, graduated to journeyman status and became the first woman admitted to the local pottery guild. It was during this time that her work took on the sensuous, flowing and biomorphic forms that would continue throughout her career. Read more >
