[1] While still a student, she was employed as an artist and designer at the noted Cleveland ceramics firm Cowan Pottery.
[1] Early in her career she changed her first name from Edith to the more androgynous Edris in order to counter bias against female artists.
In 1935, Eckhardt was appointed director of the Ceramics and Sculpture division of the WPA's Federal Arts Project of Cleveland and served until 1942.
After World War II, Eckhardt explored glass making—rediscovering an ancient Egyptian technique of fusing gold leaf between sheets of glass—and eventually bronze casting.
[1] Her work in studio glass garnered her two John Simon Guggenheim Awards for Fine Arts (1956, 1959) and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship in 1956.