EVA ZEISEL: MASTER OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
The Story and Work of a Useful Object Maker
Industrial design masters, like Eva Zeisel, are very special. They are people whose work has transcended the design of everyday objects to things of beauty.
They are masters. This blog post will focus primarily on her mastery of tableware designs.
Industrial Designed Objects
Before I go any further I want to make a crucial distinction. It is the way that industrial design differs from crafts artisanship.
ID objects are meant to be machine reproduced in quantity. Yet a prototype may start out as a hand made one of a kind.
Handmade Crafts
But on the other hand, crafts are hand made. This is from start to finish.
If a craft object is reproduced, it is done so by hand. In addition, it may even stay one of a kind.
About Eva Zeisel
The details of Eva Zeisel’s life fascinate me. She spent a short time in jail for political protest. This did not dampen her enthusiasm for life. She lived to be 105. Her career included teaching Industrial design at Pratt Institute in New York. As a matter of fact, I lived near Pratt and took a course there. For an in-depth biography, read below and go to the sources and resources section of this post.
Design Styles
Eva Zeisel Colorful Teapot Designs
The picture above of the nested fish bowls may be less typical of her work than her tableware designs. Here is one that I love.
Teardrop Collections
Eva Zeisel’s work was well known for the teardrop shape design. Below are samples.
Museums, Exhibitions and Colllections
Over the years Eva’s design vocabulary changed. I would be remiss not to include other pieces I like very much. They are in the tea set category. Notable are shows of her work in museums all over the country, as well. They have included:
Denver Art Museum, Serious Play 2019
Eva Zeisel Collection at the International Museum of Dinnerware Design, Ann Arbor Michigan
Eva Zeisel Collection pieces at RISD
Future posts in the Industrial Design Masters series may include RUSSELL WRIGHT, DOROTHY, MACKENZIE-CHILDS, PORTER, and the TARGET TEAPOT DESIGNER/ARCHITECT
SOURCES & RESOURCES
Eva Zeisel, Wikipedia
Nonfiction Book Review-Eva Zeisel on Design: The Magic Language of Things
Eva Zeisel Forum, Facebook Group
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The Scoop on a $5 garage sale chair worth thousands
A $5 garage sale chair had a full description of its identity on the bottom. But it took its owners to the verge of discarding it to realize the treasure they had purchased. A very famous design couple, pictured at left, were the designers. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress). In addition, a world famous furniture company produced it.
Unknowingly, a $5 garage sale chair was used casually, left in the garage gathering dust and almost given away to Goodwill. Fortunately, the owners of this priceless designer chair discovered what they had. But it took the purchasers over a year to discover the priceless treasure they had bought for $5. They discovered it by accident. They turned the chair over. There was a metal plate with the names of both the manufacturer and the designers.
It turned out to be a Herman Miller original production Charles and Ray Eames design prototype from 1946 as the metal plate indicates. It was made by the Herman Miller Company in Zeeland, Western Michigan over 60 years ago.
These furnishings are also well documented in publications like Design in America, The Cranbrook Vision: 1925 -1950. The book accompanied the exhibit that traveled from Detroit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and then to several stops in Europe.
