Eva Zeisel On The Playful Search For Beauty

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

The ceramics designer Eva Zeisel looks back on a 75-year career. What keeps her work as fresh today (her latest line debuted in 2008) as in 1926? Her sense of play and beauty, and her drive for adventure. Listen for stories from a rich, colorful life.

Young Eva Zeisel was driven by two desires: to make beautiful things, and to see the world. Her long and legendary career in ceramics has helped her do both. Born in Budapest in 1906, she apprenticed to a guild of potters as a teenager, then worked in Germany and later Russia (where she was imprisoned by Stalin for 16 months) and Vienna.

Landing in New York in 1938 with her husband Hans, Zeisel began her second design career.

In the American postwar period, Zeisel's work simply defined the era. Organic shapes, toned colors, a sense of fun and play -- her Town and Country line for Red Wing in particular evokes an urbane early-1950s kitchen where you'd be likely to get an excellent cup of coffee and some good conversation.

Zeisel took a break from design in the 1960s and 1970s, returning to the scene in the 1980s as interest in her older work revived.

But as she collects lifetime achievement awards and sees centenary exhibitions open and close, she's not simply rehashing her older work for the repro crowd -- she's has been branching out into glassware and furniture.