‘Hella Jongerius’ solo exhibition
Date: 2003
Commissioned by: The Design Museum, London
Type: Exhibition
The Design Museum is to present the first major museum exhibition of the work of Hella Jongerius, the Dutch designer whose experiments on the cusp of design, craft and technology have established her as one of the most exciting and innovative figures in contemporary design. The exhibition will run at the Design Museum from 5 July to 26 October 2003.
Regarded as the leading woman designer of our time, Hella Jongerius’ achievements have been likened to those of great women designers of the past such as Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray. Curated in collaboration with Jongerius and featuring pieces from her personal archive, this exhibition will trace her career from her earliest projects for the Droog design group.
Born in the Dutch town of De Meern in 1963, Jongerius studied industrial design at the prestigious Eindhoven Design Academy. While continuing to work with industrial materials and processes, she began experimenting with traditional craft techniques in ceramics, textiles and glass. By fusing craftsmanship with advanced technology and celebrating the imperfection of found objects and used materials, she has explored the blurring of boundaries between the old and the new, and high-tech and low-tech.
This exhibition will feature Jongerius’ sought-after limited editions, such as her embroidered ceramics and the crystal replica ball gown she designed as a chandelier for Swarovski, as well as industrial commissions like the award-winning Repeat furniture fabric for Maharam. The Design Museum will also exhibit the My Soft Office collection of furniture for the workplace of the future, for which Jongerius designed a bed with computer keyboards embedded in touch-sensor pillows and computer screens in its base.
Unusually in industrial design, Hella Jongerius’ work has an emotional quality. Her unconventional combinations of materials and techniques ensure that objects such as her Giant Prince embroidered ceramic vase or the part-ceramic, part-glass Groove and Long Neck bottle not only fulfill a practical function, but express the contradictions of contemporary life.