Viktor Schreckengost, who died late Saturday night in Florida, aged 101, was a prolific industrial designer, artist, and teacher who managed in a 70-year career to produce everyday objects from ceramic dinnerware and frying pans to metal lawn chairs for Sears, and everyone’s childhood favorite—the banana-seat bicycle.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, a commercial pottery town near Youngstown, Ohio, that at one time was known as the “Pottery Capital of The World.” His interest in design began by making things as a boy, when he and his brothers molded tiny sculptures of soldiers and football players out of the clay his father brought home from his job as a potter. After attending the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Kunstgewerbeschule, in Vienna, Schreckengost began working at the Cowan Pottery Studio, in Rocky River, Ohio. One of his first commissions, in 1930, was a large punch bowl for Eleanor Roosevelt. The “Jazz Bowl”, with its jazzy, cubist style, depicts skyscrapers, neon lights, the Cotton Club, and Radio City Music Hall, and has become one of the signature pieces of American Art Deco. In 2004, a later version of the bowl sold at Sotheby’s auction house for $254,400.

When asked what advice he would give a young designer, he said: “Always get back to the function of the object. The aesthetics, the marketing, and whatever you want to worry about all comes in on top of that. Let’s take the costs out of it so that everybody can afford good design”—something that still resonates today.

For more information about his life and work, read Back to the Future or visit www.viktorschreckengost.org.