page_title: Eva Zeisel
section_title: US career, 1937–1960s
hierarchical_section_title: Eva Zeisel / Biography / US career, 1937–1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Red Wing Pottery pieces from "Town and Country" collection by designer Eva Zeisel (glazed earthenware, ca. 1945).
context_page_description: Eva Striker Zeisel was a Hungarian-born American industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world and human relationships. Work from throughout her prodigious career is included in important museum collections across the world. Zeisel declared herself a "maker of useful things."
context_section_description: When Eva Zeisel arrived in the US, she had to reestablish her reputation as a designer. Beginning in 1937, she taught at Pratt Institute in New York. She and her students created designs for the Bay Ridge Specialty Company including Stratoware (a rare, short-lived line made for Sears), designed by student Frances Blod, under Eva's supervision.
  In 1942, Zeisel was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art and Castleton China to design a set of modern, porcelain, undecorated china that would be worthy of exhibition at MoMA, to be produced for sale by Castleton. The resulting exhibition, "New Shapes in Modern China Designed by Eva Zeisel," ran from April 17 to June 9, 1946, and was the first one-woman exhibition at MoMA. It was received with wide praise, but because of wartime constraints the porcelain dishware did not go into production until 1949. Zeisel's dishes, known as "Museum" and "Castleton White," were manufactured and sold over the next several decades, initially in all-white as designed by Zeisel, and later with a wide variety of decorations. Zeisel credited this commission with establishing her reputation in the US, remarking that, "it made me an accepted first-rate designer rather than a run-of-the-mill designer."
  "Museum's" success brought Zeisel to the attention of Red Wing Potteries, for whom she designed the perennially popular "Town and Country" in response to their request for dishes as "Greenwich-Villagey" as possible (see photo).
  Around 1949–1950, Zeisel was commissioned by the Hall China Company to create her most popular line, "Hallcraft, Tomorrow's Classic." Production began in 1952 and was a full line of dinnerware and tableware accessories, including plates, bowls, cups and saucers, serving platters and bowls, butter dishes, sugar bowls and creamers, candleholders, salt and pepper shakers, etc., initially intended to be offered in plain white. Some of her Pratt student-assistants were involved in designing the initial decal patterns that Hall requested. Other patterns were designed by the painter Charles Seliger.
  In 1955, Zeisel created a second line for Hall called "Century" with production beginning in 1956. In the late 1950s she designed for several international companies including Rosenthal AG, and Mancioli Pottery.
caption: Some of Zeisel's ceramic pieces designed for Red Wing Pottery's "Town and Country" dinner service (1947). This set includes a "mother and child" salt and pepper shakers, and a baby oil pourer that exemplify her organic, curving forms.[12][13]
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