Unique ‘Jackpot Field’, from the ‘Layers’ series, 2006

In 2005, Hella Jongerius, Moss, and Maharam, the innovative, leading American design house and producer in advanced textiles, began collaboration on a new project, ‘Layers’. The genesis of the project was Michael Maharam’s earlier brief to Hella: to develop a family of layered, richly textured textiles, using multiple over- stitching techniques and cut-away technologies that had never been combined before. Moss was to develop with Hella a suite of furnishings with which to present the new textiles in an exhibition to be staged at its gallery in May 2006. I remember meeting my friend Hella in Paris for a brain-storming session; for several days we would meet in my hotel room, sit ourselves on the floor, and, sustained by room service, talk, talk, talk, Hella decided to use the opportunity to explore montage - the layering of elements in one work (the premise we carry forward now, years later, in Moss: Dialogues Between Art & Design. The result was a collection of five works which we referred to as ‘Domestic Interior Fragments’ - mixed media assemblages incorporating textiles, carved woodwork, cast bronze, and ceramics. Each piece in the collection was conceived as an intimate, fully considered domestic moment, combining textile-based furnishings with the accompanying decorative objects they inspired. ‘Jackpot Field’ was to be the most complete work, combining all of the elements - in other words, a Gesamtkunstwerk. Riffing on her new, elaborately constructed fabrics, Hella applied the still-prototypical, layered and heavily embroidered cloth not only to her earlier designs, but also to new monumental pieces traditionally crafted in wood. Not satisfied, she applied her research leading to the development of these fabrics to altogether different media - ceramic and bronze. The exhibition, therefore, was intended to offer not only the first view of the new textiles, but also simultaneously, what they had already come to inspire. In that sense, the five one-off masterworks represented, and linked, Hella’s thought processes past, present, and future. The star of the collection is ‘Jackpot Field’, a three-part work comprised of sofa, table, and vase. Hella’s ‘Polder’ sofa, which she had just designed for Vitra, is here upholstered in multi- patterned one-off prototypes of the new ‘Layers’ textiles. She combines this seating element with an integrated table with drawer, which also serves as a pedestal supporting her monumental earthenware ‘Jackpot Vase’, onto which is strapped a large cast bronze medallion. Repeating decorative elements in different media, each employing vastly different technologies and fabrication processes, ‘Jackpot Field’, from the aptly named collection ‘Layers’, is in itself a complete, self-contained showcase of Hella Jongerius’s work to date.