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Hillwood Museum & Gardens presents
Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty
Washington, D.C. – Hillwood Museum & Gardens is pleased to present Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty, April 19 through December 4, 2005. The exhibition is being presented under the gracious patronage of His Excellency the Ambassador of Hungary and Mrs. Simonyi. It is the third installation in the museum’s temporary exhibition series and the first survey of Eva Zeisel’s work in twenty years. Curated by Karen Kettering, Ph.D., Hillwood’s curator of Russian art, the exhibition premiered in February 2004 at the Knoxville Museum of Art before traveling to the Milwaukee Museum of Art. Drawing on new research, Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty surveys the eminent designer’s work while paying special attention to lesser-known periods of her career, including the years 1932 through 1936, which she spent in the Soviet Union. The exhibition also examines the impact of that period on Zeisel’s later production and presents pieces designed after the 1984 retrospective of her work at the Musée des arts décoratifs de Montréal.
At 98, Eva Zeisel is one of the most important and best-known designers in the United States. Born Eva Amalia Stricker in 1906, the artist grew up in Budapest and Vienna. She briefly enrolled in the Budapest Academy of Arts, but soon abandoned it to train as a potter. Zeisel became one of the twentieth century’s first industrial designers—creators of prototypes for factory production—when she took a job with the German ceramics manufacturer Schramberger Majolika Fabrik in 1928. Zeisel’s early work came to an abrupt halt in 1936, when while in the Soviet Union she was arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiring to assassinate Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Zeisel was imprisoned for sixteen months, spending most of that time in solitary confinement. After her release in 1937, she fled, only steps ahead of the Nazis, first to Vienna and then to England.
In 1938 Zeisel immigrated to the United States, where she went on to design wares for the Hall China Company, Red Wing Pottery, and many other companies. Her career progressed so rapidly that the Museum of Modern Art and Castleton China commissioned her to design the first modern porcelain dinnerware for the United States. Her work on that project became the subject of the first one-woman show at the Museum of Modern Art. Zeisel sums up her career and her many designs as the product of a “playful search for beauty.” Although the elegant lines and organic shapes of her work are clearly modern, Zeisel has managed to avoid what she describes as the “cold, negative” aspects of modern design. “Instead of severe functionalism, Zeisel’s work features abundant curving, natural shapes that are playful, yet familiar,” notes Frederick J. Fisher, Hillwood’s executive director.
The exhibition at Hillwood features significant objects that were not displayed in Knoxville or Milwaukee. Chief among these are two important designs for tableware conceived almost seventy years apart and made for Russia’s Lomonosov Porcelain Factory, the former Imperial Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg. The forms of Zeisel’s 1933 Intourist tea service evolved from the request to “rationalize” Soviet ceramics, i.e., simplify the shapes to make them less expensive to produce but yet retain their visual and physical pleasure for millions of Soviet consumers. The richly gilded, hand-painted version of the tea set in Hillwood’s exhibition was acquired by Marjorie Merriweather Post in the Soviet Union in 1937.
In 2000 Zeisel returned to St. Petersburg to visit the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory and the prison where she had languished for sixteen months. Reestablishing her ties to the Russian factory led to a new collaboration, with Lomonosov model maker Georgii Bogdevich traveling to New York to work with Zeisel on prototypes of a table service produced in a fine, translucent bone china. Hillwood is the first museum to acquire and exhibit the new design in full. Some of the earliest prototypes of this service were exhibited at Hillwood in April 2003 during a visit by Zeisel. In conjunction with the exhibition, Hillwood’s museum shop will carry objects designed by Zeisel and manufactured by several companies, including KleinReid, Marinha Grande Glass, and Nambé.
Hillwood was the Washington residence of Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887–1973), cereal heiress, collector, and philanthropist. Mrs. Post collected throughout her life, emphasizing the finest French and Russian objects. She assembled the largest collection of Russian imperial art outside of Russia, as well as a magnificent collection of eighteenth-century French decorative arts. Notable objects include imperial Fabergé Easter eggs, jeweled chalices and icons, Sèvres
porcelain, and Beauvais tapestries. Hillwood rests on twenty-five acres, including twelve acres of formal gardens.
Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty was organized by the Knoxville Museum of Art, and curated by Karen Kettering, Ph.D., curator for Russian and Eastern European Art, Hillwood Museum & Gardens.
Hillwood Museum & Gardens gratefully acknowledges Crate and Barrel’s participation in Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty.
To visit the exhibition reservations are required: 1.877.HILLWOOD or www.hillwoodmuseum.org
Hillwood Museum & Gardens
4155 Linnean Avene, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm. Closed in January
Admission: Adults $12, Seniors $10, Students $7, Children 6–18, $5
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