Eva Zeisel

When you begin your work, nothing exists. When it is finished it looks as if it just happened, spontaneously, effortlessly, convincingly. It…

— Eva Zeisel

The playful search for beauty.

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

I don't know the difference between working and not working.

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

Beautiful things make people happy.

— Eva Zeisel

If I hadn't been a designer, I'd have been a painter. I began as a painter and learned the craft of pottery…

— Eva Zeisel

I am a maker of useful things.

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

When I met my designs in the market of a remote village in the West Indies, or in the airport restaurant in…

— Eva Zeisel

I made the things particularly because I wanted them to see the world.

— Eva Zeisel

The designer must understand that form does not follow function nor does form follow a production process. For every use and for…

— Eva Zeisel

To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative…

— Eva Zeisel

The pleasure of making things beautiful or useful involves your feelings as well as your thinking. When your original sketch evolves into…

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

I think with my hands. I design things to be touched-not for a museum. A piece is ready when it has the…

— Eva Zeisel

Novelty is a concept of commerce, not an aesthetic concept.

— Eva Zeisel

Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer. Modernism emphasized straight lines, eliminating the expressive…

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

I don't like to design single objects. I like my pieces to have a relationship to each other. They can be mother…

— Eva Zeisel

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

— Eva Zeisel

Everything I do is a direct creation of my hands, whether it is made in wood, plaster or clay.

— Eva Zeisel