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S. ceramic designer Russel Wright. Leading postwar designers working in the United States in this mode included Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Wright, and Eva. Their influence was enormous, at home and abroad, not least because they paid greater attention to more intuitive, psychological, whimsical, witty, and playful aspects of design as well as to the softer, more organic, curvilinear, and sculptural forms. Coined in 1949 by designer George Nelson to describe the amoebiclike forms he saw as setting a new trend, Biomorphic was another term given to such forms.

That Eva had not lost one ounce of her wit or sense of style was evident in the limited-edition martini glass “Reign” (2000), designed for the Bombay Sapphire company as part of a high-profile advertising campaign for 2001. She seemed unstoppable. 310 Designs for Acme, mGlass (a consortium of studios and factories in the Marinha Grande region of Portugal), KleinReid, and Nambé followed (see Select Chronology), and by her one-hundredth birthday in 2006, Eva was the toast of many towns. 311 She had received the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Lifetime Achievement award the prior year (the award dinner was held at the White House) and the popular home furnishings company Crate & Barrel, in conjunction with the British company Royal Stafford, had recently released Classic Century, reproduced from the original molds for Hall China’s Tomorrow’s Classic and Century lines (1951 and 1957–1958 respectively; chapter 22).

While with him at Pratt one day, she heard about the job vacancy. She had never taught before, but that did not daunt Eva. 235 There was a clear emphasis on the three-dimensional aspects of design, including modeling, and she argued that links with local manufacturers were essential to the training of designers for industry. 236 Eva understood that designs often had to be changed or refined for mass production, and she recognized that the college could not provide anything near the type of experience offered by industry.