Eva Zeisel dies at 105; ceramic artist and designer known for her tableware [View all]

For those of us who buy and sell Mid Century stuff, a legend has died:

Eva Zeisel, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century who created lyrical yet practical tableware and ceramics, has died. She was 105.

Zeisel, whose deceptively simple designs first became popular in the 1940s and are still sold at major design outlets, died Friday in New York City, it was announced on her website.

"Eva Zeisel took industrial design and made it more human and sensual. She trusts that a good curve is enough," David Reid of design studio KleinReid, which features her work, told The Times in 2005.

Few who admired her often-abstract designs knew that, during her long and adventurous life, Zeisel had been imprisoned as a young woman in the Soviet Union and was later forced to flee Nazi-occupied Austria.


http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-eva-zeisel-20120101,0,6064999.story