Hella Jongerius

Jongerius is known for her experimental merging of contemporary manufacturing technologies with traditional craft techniques. Through projects such as knitted lamps and embroidered ceramics, Jongerius creates poetic interpretations of simple, everyday objects.

The Repeat Classic Print Textile was designed with the aim of making a single upholstery fabric that could be used to cover a suite of furniture so that each piece would be related to, yet distinct from, the others. The solution was to create a long ribbon of fabric composed of various panels that blend together seamlessly. Although a single fabric panel may be used individually, larger sections work as multipatterned elements that can be mixed and matched.

To obtain a different pattern for each textile panel, Jongerius uses Jacquard loom technology, in which punch cards are fed into a loom to control the weaving process, allowing for tremendous flexibility and complexity in the woven patterns. Jongerius plays with the notational alphabet used in the manufacturing process by printing these characters in a layer of white lacquer over the Jacquard patterns. The Repeat Classic Print Textile liberates a standardized manufacturing process by creating opportunities for random variation within a single system. Techniques of recombination and layering of information provide a modern take on a traditional textile process.