The ceramic artist Eleni Vernadaki was born in Chania in 1933.
She studied ceramics at the Hammersmith College of Art and Building in London (1957–1959). Upon returning to Greece in late 1959, she opened her workshop in the center of Athens, which was relocated in 1974 to Kantza, in a building specifically designed by the architect Takis Zenetos. The workshop was recently acquired by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and, in 2021, it was declared a cultural heritage monument, along with its equipment and auxiliary spaces.
In 1961, Vernadaki joined “Art Group a” (Omada Technis a), which included members such as Kokkinidis, Loukopoulos, and Kapralos, aiming to promote art to the general public. She later became a founding member of the Contemporary Art Association (SYST), where she also served as general secretary.
Through the Athens Design Center (adc), which she founded with her husband Nikos Papadakis and operated from 1968 to 2015, works that merged the handmade artistic object with modern life were promoted to the public.
She worked with clay and other materials (marble, wood, various metals, plastic), radically renewing contemporary Greek ceramic art during the second half of the 20th century. She also engaged with the architectural applications of ceramics, designing and creating wall-mounted compositions for public and private buildings. At the same time, she collaborated with Yiannis Moralis, Panayiotis Tetsis, Michalis Katzourakis, and Dimitris Mytaras to transfer their designs into ceramic compositions.
She presented her work in five solo exhibitions (Athens 1961, 1964, 1976, 1982, Paris 1979) and numerous group exhibitions in Greece and abroad (9th International Exhibition of Ceramic Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington 1963, 10th Art Basel 1979, Ericson Gallery, New York 1981).