"I think with my hands."
About five years ago I met my design heroine Eva Zeisel. At 96, she was almost all but forgotten... as lost to the modern design aesthetic as her most famous work of the 60s was becoming in flea markets around the world. She seemed frail yet graceful to me as she invited a friend and I to sit down to tea with her. She was so curious how two twenty something girls knew her work. While we wanted to know everything about her design process and how she maintained her creativity over time, she was more curious about us and how we both handled being women in the male-dominated world of design. She was absolutely charming and I wished we could have spent more time talking with her and her daughter.
"I think with my hands. I design things to be touched—not for a museum. A piece is ready when it has the shape of something to cherish."
Nowadays, Eva's charming designs are no longer a secret. When I met her in 2001, she was at the beginning of her third career... the first being in the 1930s in Europe, then her rediscovery during midcentury. In 2001 she was kicking off the first work she had done in years with a line of crystal and silver for Nambé. At 100 years of age now, it is nearly impossible to avoid her in the modern ceramic marketplace. She has been working with companies like Crate and Barrel, Royal Stafford, Bombay Sapphire, Klein Reid, and Chantal. I feel like she's gone from my secret heroine to being one of the most well-known industrial designers alive today. I'm happy to share, I'm happy that her organic shapes and thoughtful world of curves is finally getting the notoriety it deserves.
Why am I blabbing on about Eva Zeisel today? She has a write up in this week's issue of The New Yorker.