The clay vessels of Eshelman Pottery order and dignify human life. Clarity is given to simple forms by contrasting glazed and unglazed surfaces. Pure clean glazes render elegant presentation of food and drink. Paul’s developing artistic interests were directed along practical lines as he grew up in Iowa.
Eva Zeisel, a ceramic artist whose elegant, eccentric designs for dinnerware in the 1940s and ’50s helped to revolutionize the way Americans set their tables, died on Friday in New City, N.Y. She was 105.
Ms. Zeisel (pronounced ZY-sel), along with designers like Mary and Russel Wright and Charles and Ray Eames, brought the clean, casual shapes of modernist design into middle-class American homes with furnishings that encouraged a postwar desire for fresh, less formal styles of living.
Over the three decades since graduating, Paul Young has been developing his own distinctive style, fuelled by English and European folkloric traditions. Simultaneously, he has built up an impressive collecton of ceramics spanning 4,000 years. “Eating everything and spitting out the pips” is how he describes his journey of discovery.
