Eva Zeisel born - November 13, 1906

On this day in 1906, industrial designer Eva Zeisel was born. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, I'm Eves and welcome to This
Day in History Class, a podcast where we one day
ship nugs of history straight to your brain through your
ear hole. Today is November nineteen. The day was November

(00:25):
nineteen o six. Industrial designer Eva Zeisl was born in Budapest, Hungary.
She's best known for her tablewar. Eva was born Eva
Amalia Streaker to Laura Polini Streaker and Alexander Streaker. Her
mother was a historian, feminist and activist, and her father
owned a textile factory. Eva enrolled in the Royal Academy

(00:48):
of Fine Arts in Budapest when she was seventeen years
old with the intent of studying painting, but her mother
urged her to learn a practical trade, and she decided
to become a ceramist. She dropped out of the academy
after three semesters and began an apprenticeship with Jacob kapon
Chick was a member of the Hungarian Guild of chimney sweeps,

(01:10):
oven makers, roof towers, well diggers and potters. Eva soon
graduated as a journeyman or a trained worker, and started
to create her own pottery. On a trip to Paris
in nine she visited the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative
and Industrial Arts and became familiar with the Bauhaus, the
International style of architecture, and other modernist designs. Eva's work

(01:34):
was exhibited at local trade fairs, and Hungarian ceramic manufacturers
took notice of her art and commissioned collections. In nineteen
six her work one an honorable mention at the Philadelphia
Sasqui Centennial. At this point, Eva was working as a
designer in the Kishbaster factory in Budapest, creating designs for
decordive art objects. She wasn't in that job long before

(01:59):
her desire to travel boll and learned new skills took
her to Hamburg, Germany and Stromberg, Germany, where she worked
at Stromberger Majolica Fabric, designing tableware. There she honed her
industrial design expertise to create art deco designs that were
both beautiful and functional and were able to be mass
produced successfully. Eva's work merged sleek modern designs with more

(02:23):
lyrical classic shapes. In nineteen thirty, Eva moved to Berlin,
where she worked as a freelance designer for several companies.
After two years of immersing herself in Berlin's art scenes,
she ended up moving again, this time to the Soviet Union.
She worked at the Lomonosoft factory in Leningrad now St.
Petersburg designing table, where that was rooted in modernism and

(02:47):
eighteenth century Russian designs. By nineteen thirty four, she had
moved to Moscow to work at the dal Jeva Porcelain factory,
and soon she became the artistic director of the Russian
Republics China and Last Industry. But in nineteen thirty six,
Eva was falsely accused of plotting to kill Stalin. She
was arrested in May and imprisoned, where she was subjected

(03:10):
to brainwashing and torture. She spent most of that time
in solitary confinement until she was released in September of
nineteen thirty seven. When she got out of prison, she
went to Vienna, only to leave in March of nineteen
thirty eight as the Nazis arrived. From there, she moved
to England and married Hans Zeissel. The couple moved to

(03:31):
the US, where Eva would spend the rest of her
life as a designer and writer. In nineteen thirty nine,
she began teaching at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She had
two children, Jean in nineteen forty and John in nineteen
forty four. Sears, Roebuck and Company was one of the
first companies to commission her work in the US. Other

(03:51):
companies that commissioned work from Zeisel were Hauled China, Red
Wing China, Castleton China, and Western Stoneware. She even designed
the Eva Zeisel Resilient Chair. Seisl continued designing ceramics, furniture, glassware,
and other objects until her death in two thousand eleven.
Her work is in the permanent collections of the British Museum,

(04:11):
the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and many other institutions. I'm eas Jeffcote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. You can keep up with us
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d I h C podcast. You can also email us

(04:33):
at this Day at i heart media dot com. Thanks
again for listening. We'll see same place tomorrow. For more

(04:54):
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