Ida van Zijl, curator of applied art and assistant director of the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, says

"Repeat: Dots," 2002, cotton and vicose, shown on upholstered furniture.

Jongerius’ “personal touch” has made her “one of the few Dutch designers, along with Marcel Wanders and Job Smeets, who has succeeded in translating the hyper-individual approach of most Droog Design objects to industrially mass-produced products by major firms like Vitra.”

Those everyday objects include “squishable” soft sinks and vases made of colorful polyurethane; a felt-and-metal stool in a cartoonish squiggle shape; and a slightly warped porcelain dinner service so perfectly off-kilter that it ensures table-time conversation as sparkling as the illuminated words on “Crystal Frock,” the party-dress-shaped chandelier Jongerius hand made for Swarovski.
“Collecting industrial design is the hot new thing,” says Darrin Alfred, assistant curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “Jongerius’ works are tactile, they’re beautiful, and you can use them every day. You can’t do that with a van Gogh.”

By using mass production to create works that look as though they were hand-crafted, Jongerius brings vibrant new life to old, familiar forms. Her Kasese Sheep Chair, which is in the collections of MoMA, SFMOMA, Centraal Museum, Utrecht and the Dutch Textile Museum, is based on a hand-carved three-legged African prie-dieu (praying desk). The high-tech carbon fiber form, which folds, is covered with handmade felt.

“It’s one of her more iconic pieces,” says Alfred. “Jongerius is like a modern-day alchemist who uncovers secrets of the materials and lets them speak for themselves. It’s all about putting an old-fashioned product in a new guise.”