Hella Jongerius selects: works from the permanent collection
Date: 2005
Commissioned by: Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York
Type: Exhibition
This installation is the third in a series of one-gallery exhibitions in which museum and guest curators select from and respond to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s permanent collection of over 250,000 objects.
“As a designer, I am fascinated by process, both the learning process that occurs in the act of making something and the physical processes that leave their mark on a finished product. In surveying the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt for objects that embody my interests, I was immediately drawn to a group of samplers from more than 1000 examples in the collection from Great Britain, Europe and the Americas. Samplers have their own vocabulary and began as embroidered notes made by needlewomen as a personal record – almost a kind of diary – to document and exchange design ideas for later reference and inspiration.
The objects that I have installed in the exhibition all reflect the learning and making process and, as such, exist as powerfully evocative aesthetic objects in their own right. I have chosen to show these artifacts in their original museum storage containers as a reference to the Museum’s own process of preserving and organizing its collection.”
Besides these objects, Hella Jongerius Selects features a site-specific commission by Cooper-Hewitt of new needle-punch embroidered blankets designed by Jongerius. The motifs on each unique blanket are inspired by the designs found on historic samplers in the Museum’s collection.