Joan Luntz

(1922-2017), who revolutionized plastic dinnerware in the 1950s, winning awards

from the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (A fellow design winner at that show was Eero Saarinen, for one of his famous side chairs.) After the privation of the Great Depression and WWII, people around the world were drawn by the shapes of her cups and plates, so gracefully rounded in a modern style, with handles innovatively placed on the diagonal corners of serving dishes, and tab handles on cups. In a time when china and glassware dominated the dining room table, her company, Designs by Joan Luntz Inc., broke through the American houseware and home-decor market with her trailblazing designs not only for plastic dinnerware, but also wallpaper, drapes, placemats, bed sheets, towels and more. Her creations reached stores across the United States and internationally. She was honored in the Western Reserve Historical Society’s “Entrepreneurship” exhibit in 2013 for her contributions to a legacy that expressed the new post-war optimism that thrived around the nation. See images of her work at https://www.etsy.com/market/joan_luntz