Within the industrial design world, Eva Zeisel is a legend, but I had no idea when I began working for her.  It was 2000, I was 24, and had recently moved to Manhattan. I responded to an ad in the Village Voice that promised $12 an hour for an administrative assistant to a designer. The next day, I took the number 1 train to 116th & Broadway and entered her large, cluttered apartment for an interview. Immediately inside were floor-to-ceiling overstuffed bookcases. “Come in dah-ling,” I followed the voice through a maze of tables dotted with lamps, vases, and bowls (which I’d learn were all her own designs) to find an ancient-looking woman. With fluffy white hair and cloudy eyes, Eva sat in a pink and gold wingback chair. I quickly learned she was 94 years old, still working, and that she despised the word still.

There are compelling facts of Eva Zeisel’s life. Born in Hungary in 1906, she moved to Berlin in her twenties and then to Russia, becoming manager of a glass and porcelain factory. One night in Russia, Eva was arrested for helping to plot an assassination of Josef Stalin. It was a false accusation that stemmed from her connection to radical intellectuals and artists, but she spent sixteen months in solitary confinement. Once I asked her about prison, but she replied only that she chain-smoked cigarettes and exercised daily by standing on her head. After her release, Eva shipped to England, got married, and settled in NYC where she remained for the next 73 years. Over her career, Eva designed everything from modern furniture and elegant dinnerware to wall dividers and light fixtures. Her pieces continue to sell and she has permanent collections in many museums. An author, college professor, activist, and mother, Eva lived to be 105. These are facts of her life, but I gained brief entry to her private world and wicked sense of humor in the time I worked for her.

There were two of us at first, plus the live-in assistant from Russia who slept in a box room beside the kitchen. The other administrative assistant started off strong and as with every age-peer female at the time, I felt inferior, but she lasted only two weeks. Eva was short-tempered, restless, and her 94-year-old eyes could no longer read. Forced to rely on others, she was unclear about her high expectations. Part of the job required a knack for mindreading and she snapped at people when she was unsatisfied.  One morning as I approached the broad steps of Eva’s building, the other assistant was furiously drilling a cigarette. “I am not going back in,” she said. “I refuse to work for that woman.” Her icy eyes told me she meant it. I headed in and delivered the news, but Eva was unfazed as this was just one more in a long line of deserters. I stuck around. I enjoyed making sense of the disarray in her apartment office and I liked being around her, despite her unpredictability. She insisted on calling me Patrice and said I had a “golden voice” when managing phone correspondence. She also told me I was “so pedantic, dah-ling,” which I hoped was a compliment until I found it in the dictionary. Over the next two years, Eva undoubtedly tested my patience and tenacity, but I stayed with her for the duration of my time in New York.

In 2001, Eva was commissioned to design a novelty martini glass for Bombay Sapphire Gin. When a complimentary bottle arrived in her hotel lobby, I cradled it lovingly in the elevator and brought it up. Although Eva was not much of a drinker, she suggested we try some at once. It was 11 am. She asked for it neat, took a sip, widened her smiling eyes, and pushed the glass away with gusto. Over the next month, she designed. First, she used a thick black Sharpie to sketch her visions on paper, hold it close, move it back, squint one eye in an effort to see. Next, she cut along the black lines and ran her fingers on the edges of the cutout to see if it held the curves she sought. The chosen design went to her apprentice and then to Bombay. Whimsically, inside the cone-shaped bowl of the martini glass was a glass flower blooming from the stem. Eva was pleased with it and then rightfully frustrated when the folks at Bombay asked for a more masculine design. I listened to her end of the phone conversation with them. In her unique accent seasoned by all the languages she spoke, she calmly asked, “What do you suggest I do, change the flower to a penis?” With that, she gave an impish grin. Bombay wound up going with the lovely flower design after all.

Radio plays a significant role in my memories of Eva. She remembered when radio broadcasting was cutting edge and the very first time she heard it. An avid radio listener, especially once her eyesight faded, Eva always listened to it at bedtime when settling into the couch where she slept. Some nights I worked late, attempting to patch and edit her old manuscripts on yellowing paper. From the other side of the apartment, I’d hear her fiddling with the radio. She’d flip from classical music to NPR, and then pause awhile on Hot 97 for current styles in hip hop. Then she’d move up the dial to 97.9 for the latest in Latin music, letting salsa and bachata fill the apartment. Ever curious and cosmopolitan, living in Manhattan for three-quarters of her life, she stayed connected to shifting trends and ideologies. I was with her on 9/11. She listened to the radio the entire day. When the newscaster announced that the second tower had collapsed, she let out a mournful wail that I won’t forget. That day her instinct told me to go buy gas masks and although this seemed ridiculous, I dutifully went in search of them but came back empty-handed.

At the end of most work shifts, I dined with Eva in her living room. We sat at a glass-topped table of her creation, ate soft vegetables and good cheese on dishes she designed, and drank white wine from glasses she made. Sometimes we shared dinner quietly and other times she asked me questions about my family, my roommates, my travels. She never talked much about herself, in fact, she was selfless in conversation. Much of my knowledge about her life came from decades of publicity stuffed into filing cabinets in her apartment.  I observed her, though; how she moved and laughed and got angry, how she interacted with others and ended each evening on the phone with her daughter. Her humble wisdom, humor as a survival tool, and elegant fashion trickled through each moment I spent with her. She helped me grow. Some days at work, I flipped over pillows and peered under couches, searching for her hearing aid or her dentures (which I once found charred in the fireplace). Other days, she had me read mail she received in German, of which I spoke not a word. I accompanied her to legal arbitrations and met visiting artists and writers. I tried desperately to organize a lengthy manuscript she’d written in the sixties about the New York Conspiracy of 1741, but these words never came together. This seemed such a shame, but I’m learning now it doesn’t matter. Eva Zeisel stayed young and alive for so long because she pursued her passions, regardless of the outcome. When people asked her why she still was working well into her nineties, she found this question preposterous. Her work was her passion which was her life, so why would she ever have stopped? I’m trying to live my own life this way, too.

– Patty Bamford