Quotes from Eva Zeisel

Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer. Modernism emphasized straight lines, eliminating the expressive S curve. This made it harder to communicate emotions through design.

Beautiful things make people happy.

When I met my designs in the market of a remote village in the West Indies, or in the airport restaurant in Zurich, I felt like the mother of many well-behaved children.

If I hadn't been a designer, I'd have been a painter. I began as a painter and learned the craft of pottery in order to support myself.

My designs are meant to attract the hand as well as the eye.

If you think of beautiful things, you're not sad.

When I design something, I think of it as a gift to somebody else.

My time in Weimar Berlin was the most elegant in my life. I would have parties for a hundred people - writers, scientists, artists.

I never wanted to do something grotesque. I never wanted to shock. I wanted my audience to be happy, to be kind.

When you have clay in your hands, it's hard to avoid making birds.

I don't like to design single objects. I like my pieces to have a relationship to each other. They can be mother and child, like the Schmoo salt and pepper shakers, or brother and sister like the Birdie salt and peppers, or cousins, like most of my dinnerware sets.

I don't call myself an 'industrial designer,' because I'm other things. Industrial designers want to make novel things. Novelty is a concept of commerce, not an aesthetic concept.

The designer must understand that form does not follow function nor does form follow a production process. For every use and for every production process there are innumerable equally attractive solutions.

Men have no concept of how to design things for the home. Women should design the things they use.

I am a maker of useful things.

When you begin your work, nothing exists. When it is finished it looks as if it just happened, spontaneously, effortlessly, convincingly. It looks as though it had been there all along.

My work is very bodily. It's not a shell, but a body.

Art has more ego to it than what I do.

The playful search for beauty.