Platter

Eva Zeisel was a preeminent designer of dinnerware in America, working for a number of different companies within the United States. Born in Budapest, she had already established a reputation as an industrial designer for German and Russian factories prior to leaving Europe. She joined many artists who fled Europe at the outbreak of World War II, and continued her work, both teaching and designing. The platter is from her service called "Tomorrow’s Classic," made for the Hall China Company, which became the number-one selling dinnerware of the 1950s. It is noted for its biomorphic, curvaceous shapes with crisp, thin edges, which the platter well demonstrates. The line was made to accommodate different transfer patterns. The design on the platter was called "Fantasy," and was the work of a team of artists Zeisel—William Katavolos, Douglas Kelley, and Ross Littel, all architecture students at Pratt Institute. Its modernist, abstract pattern is almost mathematical in feeling, akin to atoms circling a nucleus.