PS Jonsberg
Date: 2005
Commissioned by: IKEA, Sweden
Type: Industrial product
These vases for Ikea are, in fact, the first time that Jongerius’ designs are actually being produced in a very large edition. For Jongerius it feels like being an architect who is building his first multi-story block. The key question has always been whether she could retain her own style in such a large edition. After all, in her work she actually strives to give every object a personal touch, by applying small modifications, or including deliberate imperfections.
Every vase has been hand worked, and due to the design concept – if you look closely – you continue to see this.
For a designer, the attraction of working with Ikea is the sheer volume of the production. Jongerius finds it interesting to apply this mass-production, with its own rules and laws, to her work, in order to marry her own hand-crafted style with the industrial production process; the best of both worlds.
“Something surprising happened; I wanted to make a product that is uniform in shape, but that reveals that it must have been made in a traditional workshop because there is no industrial production technique for this particular ceramic process.
This was possible because Ikea has manufacturing companies in China, which produce very high-quality handwork, but can also deal with large volumes. Thus, a great many traditional procedures also equals mass industry. For this, a product doesn’t always need to be hygienic and have a perfect appearance.
The 4 vases all have an identical shape, a familiar archetypal vase form, which for me is a blank sheet of paper on which I can design.
Every vase has a pattern that represents a particular part of the world, and each pattern is also assigned its own ceramic technique. It reveals the great diversity of the ceramics world. Moreover, it shows four different characters and traditions that produce completely different vases, despite the fact that the basic form is one and the same.”