About This Artwork
Hella Jongerius
Dutch, born 1963
Embroidered Tablecloth2000
Linen, cotton, and porcelain
80 x 120 x 2 cm
Funds provided by the Architecture & Design Society, 2009.12
Architecture and Design
Not on Display
Hella Jongerius delights in nonconformist approaches to design, seeking relevance to contemporary society with a do-it-yourself aesthetic reinterpreted through industrial processes and new materials. Embroidered Tablecloth represents Jongerius’s skill at pairing distinct, familiar objects and combining them in unexpected ways. Inspired by the dragon and flower patterns visible on two famous Asian vases housed in the collection of the Museum Princessehof in the Netherlands, Jongerius stitched a ceramic plate directly onto a tablecloth in order to “liberate the images from the confines of the material.” As this piece attests, her work speaks to a contemporary creative process that produces new modern hybrids that elicit an emotional response from the user.