Hella Jongerius

Phaidon Press

text: Louise Schouwenberg
editor: Lucas Verweij
photography: Joke Robaard / Maarten Theuwkens
design: COMA

hardback, 144 pages

ISBN 0 7148 4305 9

Retail Price £ 24.95 / $US 39.95 / € 39.95 / $CAN 59.95 / $AUS 75.00
 


Hella Jongerius (b. 1963) is a Dutch designer who first gained notoriety in 1993 as a member of the renowned Dutch group Droog Design. She now heads her own Rotterdam-based company, JongeriusLab, making a highly unique collection of products including ceramics, textiles, tableware, and furniture. Eschewing the slickness and perfectionism of much current industrial design, as well the concurrent minimalist trend of the1990s, Jongerius brings an emphasis on sensuous but simple forms, interesting textures, and organic and malleable materials that often retain traces of their origin and making. Her objects are sold by Cappellini, Donna Karan, Swarovski crystal, Maharam fabrics, and several companies in The Netherlands, and her work is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and several Dutch museums.


This first monograph on Jongerius will present a visual “catalogue” of her career in a cinematic graphic layout, consisting of photographs and interview text running continuously from the front cover through the book pages to the back cover. Two essays by Louise Schouwenberg are interspersed within the book, addressing themes relating to Jongerius’s work. Specially commissioned photographs by Joke Robaard will show the objects in context, in factories, shops, museums, and studios in various countries. The photography aims to show the social and historic dimensions of the objects and Jongerius’s approach. Also included are photographs by Jongerius of her design process over the years






Hella Jongerius was born in De Meern, Holland, and studied at the Academy for Industrial Design at Eindhoven. Upon graduation in 1993 she began working with Droog Design, and in 2000 she founded her own design firm, JongeriusLab. In 2000 she was also named director of the Design Atelier at the design academy in Eindhoven. In her six years with Droog she produced, among other objects, a collection of polyurethane bathmats, inflatable textiles, soft vases, a folded washtub for DMD in The Hague, a collection of updated 14th-century shards called “7 Pots/3 Centuries/2 Materials” for the Museum Boymans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, her “Kasese” chair, and porcelain objects for Donna Karan’s home collection.

She participated in many exhibitions with Droog Design around the world, including the 1995 exhibition “Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York , “Self Manufacturing Designers” (1996) at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, “5 Years Droog Design” at the Central Museum in Utrecht, “Do Normal” (1998) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and annual shows in Milan. Working solo, Jongerius was included in the 2001 exhibition “Workspheres” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with her entry “My Soft Office” and “Bed in Business”; and in an exhibition at the Dutch Textile Museum in Tilburg the same year.

Jongerius has taught at the Domus Academy in Milan, the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Karlsruhe and Hamburg.

Louise Schouwenberg is a Dutch artist, writer, and publicist. She was trained as a sculptor at Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She writes for the Dutch art magazine Metropolis M and is a contributing editor of FRAME magazine. In addition, she is a tutor at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.









review:

DIVINE LOOK AT HELLA

Hella Jongerius`s new monograph out this month is as you`d expect - a down-to earth exploration of her work with a humorous, tongue-in-cheek slant. Released to coincide with her first solo show on view at the Design Museum, it spans the past 15 years of this Dutch designer`s illustrious career, from member of the Dutch avant-garde collective Droog Design to work produced by her own firm JongeriusLab, set in 2000.
Every aspect of her new monograph has been careful thought out and researched, even down to the transparent paper the essays are printed on. Chosen by graphic designers, COMA, the paper resembles parchment and simulates the handmade quality fundamental to Jongerius`s designs. Louise Schouwenburg, a Dutch artist and writer who penned the two essays in the book, writes of Jongerius`s approach that `old techniques are reconsidered without prejudice and accepted as contemporary options`, specifically referring to `Embroidered Tablecloth` (1999), a work in which Jongerius stitched a plate onto a tablecloth. With a bent toward craft techniques, Jongerius explains that hers is `an approach you can apply to industrial products and new, high-tech materials.`
Thread throughout the book is a punchy interview between Jongerius and Schouwenburg that could only have been staged between two very good friends. Schouwenburg gently riles Jongerius with contradictory jibes and snappy comments, stimulating a discussion with a lot of spark. `Wouldn`t you like to design
something of an eternal value,` she asks, to which Jongerius retorts: `Not at all ... I don`t give a damn whether my products are still of interest in 10 years`, to which she replies: `I don`t believe a word of it.`
Unusually, the interview begins on the front cover. Jongerius quips: `At least your colleagues give you flowers when you have something to celebrate. That never happens when you`re a designer. Who`d want to ruin a perfectly good vase by putting flowers in it?` Very confusing. It`s like entering a conversation mid-flow, but we`ve not even turned the first page.
Cornelia Blatter and Marcel Hermans of COMA explain that the concept of the looped text, with no apparent beginning or ending, was the result of learning about Jongerius own working methods. `Hella never knows where a project will take her`, Hermans says, `it`s always open ended. We wanted the text to also be a work in process.` One is immediately drawn into the interview, so it comes as a surprise to read on the back cover that this is a fake.
Jongerius consistently plays with conventional ways of presenting contemporary design in book form, such as the snapshots of her work displayed in museums, stores, residences, and even on the dusty shelves in her studio in place of the more traditional glossy photographs in the studio.
She hired Joke Robaard to document her work and capture her students, staff, factory workers, fans and clients interacting and living with her designs. Every aspect of conceptualising, designing, manufacturing, curating and eventually selling her pieces is portrayed, revealing the immense collaboration to make even a single piece a success.
An unexpected cover image shows a group of casually dressed factory workers holding her `Red/White Vases` from 1997. `I`m not doing all this alone in a sweet little atelier`, Jongerius emphasises. `It`s a company with a lot of hands and heads together. I`m not only showing the people who are making the products but also the consumers, the students with their dreams and the salespeople. Design is a large group of human beings involved.`
An insightful and personal exploration of her work, Jongerius`s monograph speaks to an audience interested in design but also in the creative process. As she notes, she has created `a book with all the stories behind the products, all the worlds the products are living in.`

Zöe Ryan, Bluepint, August 2003, UK
 
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