The playful search for beauty.

When I met my designs in the market of a remote village in the West Indies, or in the airport restaurant in Zurich, I felt like the mother of many well-behaved children.

My designs are meant to attract the hand as well as the eye.

Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer. Modernism emphasized straight lines, eliminating the expressive S curve. This made it harder to communicate emotions through design.

To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means ‘not like this’ and ‘not like that.’ And the ‘not like’—that’s why postmodernism, with the prefix of ‘post,’ couldn’t work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one.

If you want to be creative, don't try to do something new. Doing something new means NOT doing what's been done before, and that's a negative impulse. Negative impulses are frustrating. They're the opposite of creativity, and they never yield good ideas.

If I hadn't been a designer, I'd have been a painter. I began as a painter and learned the craft of pottery in order to support myself.