Artist/Designer
Anne Masson °1969
Anne Masson works together with Eric Chevalier since 2003. Both educated in textile design, their objects and accessories are the result of experiments on various materials and structures. They deal with knitwear, which allows to build up the fabric and the shape/volume at the same time. They also elaborate personal process and mixed technics that revail singular and amazing sides of materials.Their work suppose industrial and artisanal process, sometimes both on the same piece.Besides their own production they both teach in the textile design department of the ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels, and work for ZYMO Studio scrl, a knit design laboratory.Anne has been producing her own accessories line since 2000, and used to work for the Trends Studio Edelkoort in Paris. Eric used to create materials for the Haute-Couture in Paris and worked in the automotive industry, before developping the objects that are today selfproduced under the Chevalier-Masson label.
Anton Reijnders °1955
Most work of Anton Reijnders consists of different materials and combinations of clearly identifiable and less identifiable elements. Elements of fired clay are often the starting point for the realization of a work. Clarity, beauty, complexity and a nagging quality are played off against each other, within one work.The work allows different layers of possible meaning and is not an illustration of an idea. Through his work Reijnders offers an alternative to images that surround us; images that are increasingly subservient to propaganda and quick effects.
Chris Kabel °1975
Chris Kabel was born in Haarlem in 1975 and grew up in Bloemendaal. He started his studio after graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2001. In 2002 Chris moved to Rotterdam where he continues to live and work.
He has worked with (inter)national companies and institutions like Droog Design, Moooi, Koizumi, Royal VKB, the City of Seoul, the City of Bruges, Levi’s, Charles & Marie and Alessi. He teaches and does workshops at several design schools, amongst others at Design Academy Eindhoven and at ECAL in Lausanne.
more about Chris Kabel
Christoph Zellweger °1962
Christoph Zellweger is a thought provoking contemporary jewellery designer. Traditionally trained as a goldsmith, he designed fine jewellery for several years in Switzerland before attending the Royal College of Art in London. His approach to design today challenges conventional boundaries and explores unfamiliar territories and thoughts. Besides running his studio, he lectures and holds a professorial research post at Sheffield Hallam University. He recently directed the Pro Pueblo Sustainable Design project in Ecuador for the University of the Arts in Zurich. His work features in museums in Europe and in North America with accolades such as the Swiss Federal Prize for Design, three times. In 2007 he published his monograph Foreign Bodies, which extends today’s definition of body adornment.
more about Christoph Zellweger
Diane Steverlynck °1976
After studies in visual arts and then textile design at La Cambre in Brussels, Diane Steverlynck has opened het studio in 2003 to develop objects and textile accessories.
Diane’s work focus includes research on materials and structures and their influence on the use and identity of everyday objects. Characterized by their diversity, her products are simple and coherent. Behind each of her creations, there is a story, one that involves material, people, use and memory. In a rigorous way, she develops products from the diversion of structural and functional principles inscribed in our collective memory. Treated with care, the construction and finishing details carry the symbolic and visual identity of the object. Rather than from a formal will, her projects take simple structural and functional principles, drawn from various sources and associated in an unexpected way, as a starting point. Cross breeding heterogeneous cultural references, her creations respond to universal uses while carrying the trace of collective and personal mythologies.
Diane Steverlynck works for industrial clients like Limited Edition (BE) and Trico (JP). In 2000 and 2001 she worked for Studio Edelkoort in Paris and as an assistant to Dutch textile designer Eugène Van Veldhoven. She also distributes her own productions in galleries and shops such as Verzameld Werk (BE) and Magazin (DE). At the same time she is active in the teaching area at the Gent Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
Eric Chevalier °1974
Eric Chevalier works together with Anne Masson since 2003. Both educated in textile design, their objects and accessories are the result of experiments on various materials and structures. They deal with knitwear, which allows to build up the fabric and the shape/volume at the same time. They also elaborate personal process and mixed technics that revail singular and amazing sides of materials.Their work suppose industrial and artisanal process, sometimes both on the same piece.Besides their own production they both teach in the textile design department of the ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels, and work for ZYMO Studio scrl, a knit design laboratory.Anne has been producing her own accessories line since 2000, and used to work for the Trends Studio Edelkoort in Paris. Eric used to create materials for the Haute-Couture in Paris and worked in the automotive industry, before developping the objects that are today selfproduced under the Chevalier-Masson label.
Esther Knobel ° 1949
Esther Knobel was born in Poland in 1949 and immigrated to Israel in 1951. She lives and works in Jerusalem. She studied at that city’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design from 1970 to 1974 and at London’s Royal College of Art from 1975 to 1979, when she received her masters in Jewelry Design. She taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1985-91 and at the Shenkar College of Textile Technology and Fashion in Ramat Gan in 1993-95. Her awards include the Bezalel Prize of Excellence, 1974 and the Françoise van den Bosch Prize, 1994. Her jewelry can be found in the collections of numerous international museums, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, the Craft Board of the Australia Council, Sydney, and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. One of the most prominent Artists in Israel, Esther’s work explores the essence of ornamentation and self-adornment. Beginning in 2006 at the Racine Art Museum, Ether’s work will be part of the four person traveling exhibition, Women’s Tales.
Felix Lindner °1973
Felix Lindner presents us with hyperreal souvenirs, celebrations of 20th century adventures. These jewels allude to risky experiences: kinder surprise, nightclubs, letting your babe drive your car, and they saturate the desire to hold on to these moments of contemporary wonder in the preciousness of their materials and the perfection of their making.
Somewhere in the beautifully blurred boundaries of fashion, art, design and old world skill the empire of the New Classics is being built by Felix Lindner. (Helen Britton, 2002)
Florian Ladstaetter °1967
Austrian-born Florian Ladstätter creates art jewelry. Intrigued by the relationship between material and shape, he approaches each of his creations as if they are individual works of art. Having studied both Metal Design and Philosophy at university and tried his hand at furniture design and light installations, the designer is constantly exploring new materials and the way in which they relate to the human form.
Created for the jewelry wearer who is seeking unusual yet stylish pieces, Ladstätter’s quirky one-off designs come to life when worn. Keen to create jewelry that subtly makes a statement, Ladstätter explains: “All the best jewelry is present somewhere at the edge of consciousness. It’s not pushy but enriches a situation in a subtle way”. Having showcased his collections throughout his hometown of Vienna and at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Ladstätter’s pieces triumph as both jewelry and miniature sculptures.
more about Florian Ladstaetter
Frank Van Houtte °1951
Frank Van Houtte, originally a limburg ceramist (Genk, 1951) lives and works in Ghent since the late eighties. He worked and studied in Switzerland before starting as an independant ceramic artist in 1978. In 1991 he started, together with Ingrid De Coster, gallery ‘Verzameld Werk’ (Onderstraat 23a in B-9000 Ghent, Belgium).
Significant in Frank’s work is the strength of its simpleness: each element is a really pure volume. The severity in form, its razor-sharp edges and the smooth surface give his creations an imperfect perfection.
Each surface, each line contributes to a sharpness, a tenseness which seems to lead to what ’s impossible.
Even the spectator’s playfulness gets a chance: the moveable elements in different sizes and forms can be combined freely.
New forms are created by stacking, turning over, flipping… the objects, just as you do when playing with your block-system box. The nice finishing and the mat surface give it the toy-like appearance.
Frank Van Houtte’s work was shown in Belgium and abroad: Brussels, Amsterdam, Stutgart, Barcelona, London, Copenhagen, New York, Osaka, Taipei… His work is owned by several musea and private collectors.
Herman Hermsen °1953
Herman Hermsen graduated from the Arnhem Academy of Fine Art 30 years ago and since 1992 is professor in the product and design department of the University of Applied Sciences, Düsseldorf. Commuting between various places of work and interchanging professional duties can be unsettling, but it is also inspirational and puts things into perspective. Herman Hermsen’s designs are in keeping with a minimalist and conceptual tradition. The quest for innovative interpretations and a balanced relationship between the decorative and the constructive inform all his work. But he is also no stranger to irony and playfulness. Diversity, clarity and serial production make his work appealing and accessible in equal measure.
Hilde De Decker °1965
From 1983 through 1985 Hilde De Decker studied interior design at Sint Lucas Institut in Gent, followed, between 1985 and 1989, by the study of jewelry at Sint Lucas Institut in Antwerp, which she completed in 2005 with a Master’s degree. Hilde De Decker’s oeuvre is on display in all well-known galleries and museums in Europe, and it is also highly regarded in America and Japan. She has received numerous awards.
Hilde de Decker’s field of work is not exclusively devoted to the crafting of individual pieces of jewelry, indeed entire installations featuring jewelry frequently form the focal point. She places enormous value on her artistic freedom. Time and again she is tempted into provoking and pushing boundaries.
Hilde De Decker has in fact made a radical break with the traditional “jewelry embellishes its wearer” view of jewelry – and yet still gives many of her pieces an air of the sensual. Her works are frequently referred to as “surrealist”, and as such are included in the tradition of Surrealism as represented by the Belgian artist René Magritte.
Ineke Hans °1966
Since graduating from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem (NL) in 1991 and the Royal College of Art in London in 1995, Ineke Hans’ work has evolved in many ways, acquiring the identity most clearly of a designer, with the impulses of a sculptor, and the industrial experience needed to define products with a commercial life.
She worked for three years for HABITAT UK on their mass-produced furniture and product collections and in 1998 started to work from Holland. Here she founded her studio INEKE HANS/ARNHEM, working with a few assistants on events, interiors, furniture and products. Alongside this she still designs her own collections, which she presents internationally.
From the beginning her work has been based on a strong belief in magical power of products and environments upon our imagination and behaviour. ‘Perceptiveness about the connections between people and objects is a fundamental prerequisite for a furniture designer’.
Jaime Hayon °1974
Spanish artist-designer Jaime Hayon was born in Madrid in 1974. As a teenager, he submerged himself in skateboard culture and graffiti art, the foundation of the detailed, bold-yet-whimsical imagery so imminent in his work today. After studying industrial design in Madrid and Paris he joined Fabrica in 1997, the Benetton-funded design and communication academy, working closely with the legendary image-maker and agitator Oliverio Toscani. In a short time he was promoted from student to head of their Design Department, where he oversaw projects ranging from shop, restaurant and exhibition conception and design to graphics. Eight years later, Jaime broke out on his own, first with collections of designer toys, ceramics and furniture, followed by interior design and installation. His singular vision was first fully exposed in ‘Mediterranean Digital Baroque’ at London’s David Gill Gallery, an exciting mise en scène, largely executed in ceramic, followed by ‘Mon Cirque’, which traveled to Frankfurt, Barcelona, Paris and Kuala Lumpur. These collections put Jaime at the forefront a new wave of creators that blurred the lines between art, decoration and design and a renaissance in finely-crafted, intricate objects within the context of contemporary design culture.
Walking Dinner
Jo Taillieu °1971
Karen Pontoppidan °1968
‘My jewellery speaks in a quiet voice about everyday life, connecting small moments of beauty and sadness, invisible to history, with the immortality of the metal.’
Karen Pontoppidan was trained at the Academy der Bildenden Künste in Munich. She is currently professor at Ädellab (metal department) Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden.
Kiko Gianocca °1974
‘To create objects is exploring what is around me and effect me. To manipulate materials and to develop new forms is a sort of documentation. In the making, conscious and unconscious meet and the resulting objects become the refuge of thoughts, memories, joy and fears.
I like to think of them as entities that accompany us, and that on the body are materialised. Their tangibility in a way serves to overcome a sense of absence.
Often the result is more a materialisation of an experience, rather than a formal interpretation. Abstract forms, volumes, varying dimensions and textures are just the vocabulary.’
Lucile Soufflet °1975
Lucile Soufflet was born in 1975 and studied design at La Cambre (Brussels). Her research is focussed on individuals, relationships, and the playful side of things. Part of her activity is devoted to public spaces with projects such as ‘Projet 105’ (artistic intervention in social housing) and furniture like ‘bancs circulaires’, ‘my place’ or ‘soft bench’, but she also questions everyday domestic objects.
Magdalena Gerber °1966
‘I’m interested in stories on objects, pictures and her materialization, ceramic forms and her new shapes and the interaction between the users when the objects takes her function’.
Manon van Kouswijk °1967
‘Within my work I focus on the value and meaning that everyday objects represent to us. I am interested in actions and rituals in which these objects take part, like finding, buying, collecting, receiving and giving. In the works, I visualise aspects of their functions, of use and wear, and of associations that are connected with them.’
Marion Herbst °1944-1995
Matali Crasset °1965
Gratuated at les Ateliers, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, matali crasset is industrial designer. In agreement with one her emblematic objects, the column of hospitality “when jim comes to paris”, she puts a clean methodology in which she questions the evidence of codes that governs our daily life to free oneselves better of it and experiment. Thus she develops new typologies articulated around principles as the modularity, the appropriation, the flexibility, the network. Her worj that has imposed itself from the years 90 as the refus-al of the pure shape, conceives itself like a research in movement, made of hypotheses more than of principles. She collaborates with eclectic universes, from the handicraft to the electronic music, from the textile industry to the equitable trade. Her realizations brought it thus on fields that shed id not suspect, from the scenography to the furniture, from the graphics to the interior architecture.matali crasset spent her childhood in a small village in the north of France, in a farm where work and live were intimately bound.main clients : Aquamass, Aprifel/Interfel, Artemide, BHV, Comité Colbert, Cosmit, Cristal Saint Louis, Danese, Decotec, Deknudt Decora, De Vecchi, Domeau & Pérès, Domestic, Domodinamica, Dornbracht, Dune, Drugstore Publicis, Erreti, Enkidoo, Exquise, Fabrica, Felice Rossi, Forges de Laguiole, Grimaldi Forum , Guy Degrenne, Exquise design, Hermès, Hi hotel, Laser, Le Printemps, Lexon, L’Oréal, Orangina, Pierre Hermé, Pitti Immagine, Première Vision Le salon, restaurant Hélène Darroze, San Lorenzo, Seb/Tefal,Swarosvki, Sodebo, Tarkett Bâtiment, Tendence, Top Mouton, Thomson Multimédia, Who’s next
Richard Hutten °1967
Richard Hutten graduated at the Academy Industrial Design Eindhoven in 1991. That same year he started his own designstudio, working on a variety of projects such as: furniture-, product-, interior- and exhibition design.
He developed his ‘No sign of design’ and ‘Table upon table’ concepts.
He is one of the most internationally successful Dutch designers; a key exponent of “Droog Design”, in which he has been involved since it’s inception in 1993.
Stephan Seyffert °1960
Susan Pietzsch °1969
Susan Pietzsch graduated in Heiligendamm, Northern Germany, as a jewellery designer. She is still based on the Baltic coast and Japan. Pietzsch started to exhibit her work in 1997, featuring wearable jewelry pieces. In parallel with this she started working with autonomous objects, independent from the body, presented as an installation where the adorning aspect steps back in favor of an artistic statement.
Susan Pietzsch founded Schmuck2 in 2001 and since then she has installed a continuous international exhibition program. She has worked in different collaborations, as Schmuck2 with a focus on unusual, diverse takes on themes of ‘jewellery’, combining different cultural backgrounds such as artists, designers and art-theorists. Her projects shape a multi-faceted image for contemporary styles of jewellery, using unconventional concepts that move between fine and applied arts.
Suska Mackert °1969
Suska Mackert expresses her art in a variety of media. She is interested in codes and rituals, emotions and customs, even rules of etiquette revolving around a particular piece of jewellery or other object. This interest has also inspired her to build up small typological collections. For instance, she has previously studied ritual forms of distinction, the wearing of ‘decorations’ as signals of merit. In another project she studied images of jewellery as logos, focusing especially on the socio-psychological significance of body ornaments in the era of globalisation.