Hella Jongerius – Smart Hands

Hella Jongerius (1963) is internationally recognised as one of the most prominent contemporary Dutch designers, thanks to her distinctive vision of the design profession and her investigative approach. Textiles play a central role in her design practice. This autumn, the TextielMuseum is devoting an exhibition to her textile oeuvre and her design process.

Design Archive Hella Jongerius. Photo by Roel van Tour

At the heart of the exhibition are the generous donation of Jongerius’s textile design archive to the TextielMuseum and objects from her textile oeuvre, including recent acquisitions such as Space Amulets (2021) and Aerial View (2021) from the Woven Windows series. Hella Jongerius – Smart Hands offers a playful introduction to the creative process of design, revealing the cross-connections within the oeuvre of this textile pioneer. Jongerius’s love of and fascination with textiles runs like a common thread through her work: from early experiments with textiles and vacuum-formed plastic to recent large-scale textile installations and commissions for museums and industry.

All of these projects have been meticulously prepared and archived by Jongeriuslab. The TextielMuseum received more than 4,000 sketches, models and samples, from which a representative selection—each time related to the realised objects—is presented in a scenography by Studio Harm Rensink and Brigitte Coremans. The archive has been documented on film by filmmaker and photographer Roel van Tour and forms the basis of a video portrait of Jongerius, which is also on view in the exhibition Smart Hands.

Design Archive Hella Jongerius. Photo by Roel van Tour

Jongerius’s textile oeuvre unfolds in the exhibition through themes such as craft and industry, colour and material, innovation and sustainability. On view are fabrics for the American company Maharam and related weave samples, preliminary studies for textile installations, her research into colour and three-dimensional weaving, and textile samples for the interior of KLM’s Business Class. The drawings and samples are shown in relation to fabrics and textile design objects by Jongerius that are already part of the museum’s collection.

Design Archive Hella Jongerius. Photo by Josefine Eikenaar