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Hella Jongerius is exploring a new chapter a decade into her collaboration with Maharam: designing within the technical and financial bounds of true contract textiles. This presents a new challenge for the designer while also making her work accessible to a broader audience.
In January, Maharam will launch Vases by Hella Jongerius. Stemming from her enduring fascination with colors and materials, Vases recreates Jongerius’ iconic Red White Vase of 1997 as a densely placed motif. Fusing ancient craft techniques with modern industrial technology, the Red White Vase is a mass-produced product that looks more like a handmade one-off. It served as a neutral, three-dimensional canvas in a series of color experiments that Jongerius conducted in 2003, 2007, and 2010, when she arranged over 300 multicolored vases into concentric circles as part of an investigation into optically merging colors. Having most recently appeared on the cover of the Phaidon monograph, Hella Jongerius – Misfit, the Red White Vase now has new life in woven form. Vases employs a variety of textural weave structures—including a plain, satin, rib, and twill weave—to mimic the overlapping blocks of translucent color that Jongerius had previously achieved in ceramic glaze. A companion pattern, Colorwheel by Hella Jongerius, will follow in June.
About Hella Jongerius
Hella Jongerius has been a standout in the world of product design since her early work for Droog, the Dutch design collective, and now as Jongeriuslab, where material research largely determines design direction. Her unique approach to craft from the perspective of industry, and her ability to combine these seemingly oppositional modes of production, has allowed her to create individuality on a mass scale. Her designs are typified by contextual twists, historical archetypes, and by transformations from old to new. Jongerius’ work ranges from one-offs and limited editions exhibited at galleries to consumer products available through companies like Vitra, Nymphenburg, Royal Tichelaar Makkum, and IKEA.
Two of the products designed by Jongerius in collaboration with Maharam, Repeat (2002) and Layers (2008), are part of the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.
Vases by Hella Jongerius
Width: 54"/137cm
Content: 62% Cotton, 38% Solution-Dyed Post-Industrial Recycled Nylon