‘Jews Need to Be United’: Artist Elizabeth Sutton Promotes Jewish Values With New Dinnerware Collection

Shiryn Ghermezian

Elizabeth Sutton. Photo: Provided

Jewish artist, designer, and entrepreneur Elizabeth Sutton recently released a new dinnerware collection that she told The Algemeiner is inspired by Jewish values and her dedication to having resilience and faith in the face of adversity.

A sixth generation New Yorker and single mother of two children, Sutton, 35, is a self-taught artist and avid supporter of Israel. Her past projects include fine art paintings, tiles — such as five award-winning tile collections for Tilebar — wallpaper, fashion accessories, rugs, and office chairs. Her designs can be found in hotels and resorts around the world, as well as Whole Foods, restaurants, residential spaces, Benjamin Moore, Bloomingdale’s, and Capital One Banks. The artist — whose past clients include Paris Hilton, Kourtney Kardashian, Andrea Bocelli, and Pitbull — was recognized as a rising and ambitious entrepreneur in 2021 as part of Forbes magazine’s “The Next 1000” list, and she owns a fine art gallery in Chelsea, New York.

It has been a dream of hers to create a dinnerware collection since she got divorced in 2017, Sutton told The Algemeiner. However, those plans were derailed when six months after her divorce, her best friend and art assistant was killed in a car accident, in Sutton’s car, after leaving her birthday party. Sutton said the car accident “completely shifted my life, and this dream fell by the wayside” – until now.

Sutton launched her melamine dinnerware collection in December, and it features plates, bowls, placemats, and linen napkins in 10 artistic styles. The designs incorporate many elements for which Sutton is famous in her artwork, including floral patterns, colorful and vibrant butterflies, and rainbows. She told The Algemeiner that she believes rainbows represent beauty after a storm and are a metaphor for resilience and tenacity in overcoming challenges, especially the recent global increase in antisemitic incidents. Sutton has personally experienced antisemitism in the past 15 months — since the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — for being a proud Jewish Zionist, including the loss of many business partnerships and contracts.

“What I’ve learned time and time again is another value within Judaism — hishtadlut (putting in effort) and emunah (faith),” she added. “We have our obligation to put our best effort, but at the end of the day, God is in control. My reaction to all my lost contracts was to bring my dinnerware collection to life. Everything happens in the time that God decides, not in the time that we decide. My dinnerware collection truly is a representation of Jewish values — resilience, faith, family, and gratitude.”

“Another lesson I’ve learned since 10/7 is that as a community, Jews need to be united,” Sutton explained. “Considering all the lost business, I truly believe that we need to create a self-sustaining Jewish ecosystem within business, keeping parnasah (livelihood) within the tribe, so to speak. Upon bringing this collection to life, it was of utmost importance to me that all facets attached to the creation of this collection were Jewish — every single vendor and contractor, from my factory liaison, to my digital marketing team [and] 3PL (third-party logistics).”

Sutton’s Jewish faith is a big part of her life. She told The Algemeiner that she leans on God quite a lot and trusts him to help her get through tough times in her personal life and career. She now has the mindset that “challenges are opportunities,” she said. “I’m almost grateful for the antisemitism I’ve experienced because it has taught me valuable lessons, which is that we need to be united as a [Jewish] community [and] support one another.”

Elizabeth Sutton and her new dinnerware collection. Photo: Provided

Elizabeth Sutton Home. Photo: Provided

Sutton is not the only well-known name in her family. Her grandmother, Honey Rackman, was a founder of the Agunah International organization, and the artist’s great-grandfather was Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, a pioneer and leading figure in the Modern Orthodox movement in the US. He held many distinguished positions throughout his life, such as being president of the New York Board of Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of America, and president and chancellor of Bar Ilan University. One of his biggest accomplishments was founding a religious divorce court in the late 1990s that granted annulments to agunot, which is the Hebrew term for Jewish women trapped in marriages to husbands who refuse to grant them religious divorces.

Sutton credits her grandmother for fostering a strong sense of Jewish culture and values in her life starting from an early age.

“As a child, I sat around my grandmother’s Shabbat and holiday tables every week, accompanied by my great-grandfather, where I was instilled with Jewish values — family, philanthropy, and the concept of hachnasat orchim (welcoming guests),” Sutton told The Algemeiner. “These memories are precisely what fostered in me a love for entertaining — cooking, tablescaping, and hosting my loved ones around the table … Nothing would thrill me more than to see Jewish families around the world celebrating moments and creating memories with their loved ones — whether Shabbat meals, holidays, or just a regular Tuesday — enjoying my recipes on my dishes.”

Sutton’s dinnerware collection is now available for purchase at local home decor stores and on the website for Elizabeth Sutton Home, after having a soft-launch at Bloomingdale’s in May 2023.

“It’s not just dinnerware; it embodies my values of family, love, and resilience,” she said. “My passion for cooking and hosting has culminated in a collection that transforms tables into a work of art.”