Surprising Guises

By: Nancy A. Ruhling

September 2007

It is called, simply, “Embroidered Tablecloth,” and at first glance, that’s exactly what it looks like:

"Crystal Frock," 2002, mixed media.

A snowy white linen and cotton covering embroidered with abstract flowers in thread the color of a raw T-bone steak, inviting the viewer to dinner with a matching porcelain plate. Sit down—the surprise is likely to bring you to your knees anyway—and pick up the plate. It’s stitched to the fabric like a button on an Alexander McQueen gown. You haven’t fallen down a rabbit hole; you have entered the surreal world of Hella Jongerius. Knitted glass-fiber lamps, embroidered vases and fabric candlesticks, oh my! It’s as if you had been slipped a sip from Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup, and nothing will ever be the same.

The Dutch-born Jongerius, who insists upon calling herself a designer, not an artist, began her career in 1993 as part of the innovative Dutch collective Droog Design (“droog” is Dutch for “dry,” meaning unadorned or simple), whose witty designs emphasize creativity, not consumerism. Since 2000, her Rotterdam-based company, JongeriusLab, has been producing everything from furniture for Vitra to fabrics for Maharam.

“She is one of the most talented, intense and influential designers in the world,” says Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, which has several Jongerius pieces in its collection. “She is always surprising, never abrasive, and through projects such as knitted lamps and embroidered ceramics, she creates poetic interpretations of simple, everyday objects.”
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.”
The very pattern of “Repeat: Dots,” the fabric she designed for Maharam, doesn’t so much speak

Kasese Sheep Chair, 1999,
carbon fiber and handmade felt.

of her design principles as scream them out. The distinct dots and circles were inspired by the hole punches in the jacquard cards that tell the machines which pattern to weave. And some of the bolts even have the card patterns silkscreened along the edge. The repeats themselves are pure Jongerius: They repeat so infrequently that each bolt looks custom-made.

Form and function aside, it is Jongerius’ sense of aesthetic fun that fascinates. One can’t help but be amused by her whimsical series “Nymphenburg Sketches,” low porcelain bowls that have statues of birds, rabbits and other creatures plopped down in the middle of the pattern as a surprise for those who clear their plates, and by “Crystal Candleholder,” a glass piece that looks like a stack of dinner plates that is just waiting to be washed.

Her other projects, which include gallery and museum exhibitions, exude the same disarming charm. In “Bed in Business,” part of her “My Soft Office” installation at MoMA’s 2001 exhibition “Workspheres,” a computer screen embedded at the foot and a keyboard and mouse incorporated in textiles create a high-tech working space that wouldn’t allow even the laziest worker to sleep on the job.

Suffice it to say that the power of Jongerius’ art lies in the very fact that it’s not meant to be art. Neither is a Delft bowl, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Just ask Jongerius, who designed one bowl with the traditional Dutch blue design blithely placed on the inside, where only the user can see it, and then only when it is empty.

Nancy A. Ruhling is a New York City–based freelance writer who reports on art and design.
FOR MORE INFORMATION

►JongeriusLab
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
011.31.10.477.0253
www.jongeriuslab.com

►Maharam
800.645.3943
www.maharam.com
“Repeat: Dot” upholstery.

►Moss
New York
866.888.6677
www.mossonline.com

►Porzellan-Manufaktur Nymphenburg
Chicago
312.421.3500
München, Germany (flagship store)
011.49.8928.2428
www.nymphenburg-porzellan.com

►Royal Tichelaar Makkum
Makkum, The Netherlands
011.31.5.15.23.13.41
www.tichelaar.nl

►Vitra International
New York
212.463.5700
www.vitra.com
Polder sofa, Bovist pouf, Worker chair.

►Vormgevingsgalerie VIVID
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
011.31.1.04.13.63.21
www.vividvormgeving.nl

►Hella Jongerius
by Louise Schouwenberg
(Phaidon Press, London and New York, 2003)