Hella Jongerius

SCHOUWENBERG, Louise. 2003.

Hella Jongerius

London: Phaidon Press Ltd.

This book was first brought to my attention when it was referred to in one of our group seminars. A monograph of the designer Hella Jongerius, the book provides a visual catalogue of Jongerius’ 15-year career at the time of writing. With a heavy reliance on the use photography, which runs throughout the book, the text is presented through the unique approach of an interview which the author, Louise Schouwenberg, describes as “a conversation which might have taken place”. Two essays by Schouwenberg are also included within the book, addressing themes relating to Jongerius’s work.

The following is a selection of extracts taken from the book which are of particular interest and relevance to my studies:

Pg. 10,

“I like the industrial process; art can’t compete with the scale industry works on. The commission I had from the textile company Maharam brought all these issues together nicely. Besides the design work and the large-scale execution, it also involved me in the adventure of marketing * .”

* I particularly enjoyed her description of marketing as an adventure!

Pg. 18,

“If I felt I no longer had a story to tell with my products, then I’d stop straight away. There’s already an incredible amount of superfluous trash produced under the heading of contemporary design.”

Pg. 26,

“What worries me at the moment is that people hardly ever ask questions about the sense and nonsense of the [design] profession. Many designers meekly concede to the market mechanism and do nothing but offer pragmatic solutions to demands from outside.”

Pg. 28,

“If, as a designer, you don’t grab the theme by the throat and probe it to its farthest consequence, you’re inevitably going to get stuck at the outer surface. In the long run it’s a dead end. I believe we make a mistake if we restrict ourselves to pragmatic aspects.”

Pg. 60,

“There is an incredible amount of intelligence involved in the making process itself. Trying to invent something by purely rational means rarely generates anything original. But working in my studio and pushing the envelope often yields surprises. So I let my materials and my intuition lead the way, and I put off looking for explanations to a later stage.”

Within the essay entitled “Beyond Nostalgia”, on page 45, Schouwenberg talks about Jongerius’ piece ‘Embroidered Tablecloth’, as follows:

“In stitching a plate onto a tablecloth and thereby robbing both of their everyday practical function, she not only strongly allies herself with a contemporary artistic position but also presents a commentary on underlying culture, on decorative trends, and on functionality versus artistic expression.”

From page 48 of the same essay,

“At the height of the industrial era in the mid twentieth century, the avant garde was disinterested in old-fashioned craft methods. Indeed, traces of craftsmanship in the end product almost always were seen as betraying a fixation with materials, antiquated production methods, and thus a highly questionable mentality. While the functionalist dictum of “form follows function” dominated at first, its consequent principle “form follows context” required an equal sobriety. Form, function, material, and decoration were rigorously subordinated to the all-determining concept. That concept moreover demanded an austere, smooth styling that could only be provided by industrial fabrication methods.

An important factor in the development has been the Dutch design platform Droog Design, which has been operating in the vanguard of conceptual design since the 1990s…”.

The paragraph goes on to talk more about Droog.

Pg. 51,

“Postmodernism opened the floodgates to a justification – free flood of citation, decorative use, and general hype about references to the past. Meaning was no more than skin-deep, and styles could coexist with impunity. In the design sphere, Sottsass and the Memphis movement were prominent. They rejected the formalistic values of Modernism and sang the praises of the ephemeral, the ironic, the kitsch, vehement colours and deformations of scale, with the aim of undermining the purely functional values of the object. Apart from this short-lived eruption during the 1970s and 1980s, postmodernism left little permanent mark on the design world.”

The same text later goes on to say,

“The current revival of interest in tradition among the vanguard… is not postmodernism.”

And,

“Both global developments and the expansion of the palette of acceptable manufacturing options have made it possible for conceptual design to abandon its sober interpretation. While decoration was hitherto “the incidental and inevitable side effect of the conceptual design process”, it can now function as a concept in its own right. Different styles and techniques can coexist without implying a postmodernist attitude of “everything is permitted” and, above all,
without sacrificing depth of meaning.”

Then,

“The work of designers such as Hella Jongerius proves that conceptual purity and the quest for deeper meanings are not irreconcilable with postmodern-looking decoration and traces of handiwork.

Further thoughts:

I don’t yet have a clear vision of how far away from functionality I expect my work to take me – will I ever produce self-expressive or abstract pieces with limited practical application? Jongerius’ work seems to span across several areas of design, having mainstream functional pieces for sale (albeit that the level of practical functionality varies), some manufactured in multiples in an industrial setting, others crafted by hand, whilst at the same time completing one-off abstract commissions for museums, public spaces, etc.

Further reading:

I would like to find out more about the project 'Walk Inside', a public art commission that Jongerius worked on in collaboration with Jurgen Bey at Het Schild Wolfheze – a home for visually impaired elderly.