It's in the fantasy of her forms, her passionate engagement with the world, and the extraordinary twists of her life. She has her frailties, but she won't talk about them. That will has been the one constant along Zeisel's path from bright daughter of Hungary's cultured aristocracy, to hardworking designer in European factories, to political prisoner facing execution in Stalin's Russia, to Jew fleeing Nazi Austria, to influential American teacher and industrial designer. The turnabouts can be hard to fathom. Everything is unexpectedly colorful.
Life is a present.
One should respect it. This past July Zeisel returned to Russia for the first time since her release from prison in 1937. The Lomonosov Factory, where she worked as a designer in the 1930s, had invited her to participate in a critique of the factory's work, and Zeisel offered to develop a new line of tableware while there. In the factory's museum Zeisel discovered a tea set she'd made. Zeisel recounts this with an amused grin.