“The Resilient Chair” was designed by Ava Zeisel. Ava was a Hungarian-born, American designer whose career spanned over 90 years and thousands of beautiful pieces. She is best known for her ceramics, but also worked in glass, wood, metal and plastics. She declared herself a “maker of useful things” and when you review her lifetime of work, it’s obviously accurate.
This chair is called “Resilient” but it’s truly Ava herself who exemplified this quality time and again throughout her life. While working in Russia, she was falsely accused of plotting to kill Stalin and spent 16 months in prison, 12 of those in solitary confinement. She continued designing even when her eyesight failed and she had to design by touch, until she died at 105 years old in 2011. Ava was the first female designer to be given an exhibition at the MOMA.
The epitome of resilience.