Coffee pot

Eva Zeisel's first major design in the United States, after emigrating from Hungary via Russia in 1938, was the Museum service. Shenango Pottery, looking for a design that was uniquely modern, turned to Zeisel upon the recommendation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Museum service drew from the simple and unornamented designs of the Bauhaus in Germany of the 1920s and 1930s, but Zeisel's soon-to-be trademark curavaceous, biomorphic forms, successfully executed in white porcelain, are a departure from Bauhaus tablewares. MoMA, keen to introduce Post-war Americans to modern design, showed the Museum service, several New York retailers, including Georg Jensen, carried it.