Thursday, June 12, 2014

Splash


Top: Nested ceramic bowls, 1950s, by Eva Zeisel
Bottom: "Milk Splash," photo by Skyesis (on National Geographic Kids)

Eva Zeisel (b. 1906 Budapest, Hungary, died 2011) said her work was a "playful search for beauty." 

Asked how to make something beautiful, she replied, “You just have to get out of the way.”  (NYT obit)

She didn't come by that attitude lightly. Born in Hungary in 1906, at twenty-nine she was arrested in the Soviet Union and accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin. She wasn't; she was designing perfume bottles. She served 16 months in prison, mostly in solitary confinement.
After her release, she, a Jew, left Vienna on the very day of the Anschluss (March 12, 1938). She continued to work until her death at 105.

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