About Eva Zeisel
Eva Striker Zeisel (born Éva Amália Striker, November 13, 1906 – December 30, 2011) was a Hungarian-born American industrial designer known for her ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world and human relationships. Zeisel was a self-declared "maker of useful things" and her work is held in many museum collections. == Biography == === Early life and family === She was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1906 to a wealthy, highly educated assimilated Jewish family. Her mother, Laura Polányi Striker, a historian, was the first woman to get a PhD from the University of Budapest. Striker's work on Captain John Smith's adventures in Hungary added fundamentally to our understanding and appreciation of his reliability as a narrator. Zeisel's uncles were Karl Polanyi, a sociologist and economist, and Michael Polanyi, a physical chemist and philosopher of science. === Education === Despite her family's intellectual prominence in the field of science, Zeisel always felt a deep attraction towards art. At 17, she entered Budapest's Magyar Képzőművészeti Akadémia (Hungarian Royal Academy of Fine Arts) as a painter. To support her painting, she decided to pursue a more practical profession and apprenticed herself to Jakob Karapancsik, the last pottery master in the medieval guild system.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.