The Municipality of Puttershoek in the Province of South Holland asked Annelys de Vet to design a calendar to mark the completion of a new residential district in Puttershoek. Together with the TextielLab, De Vet translated the request into 12 tea towels and tapestries that can serve as a calendar with regional topicality.
De Vet’s inspiration for the graphic design was the typically Dutch chequered tea towel. Each month features a collection of words that express an aspect of Puttershoek’s cultural, botanical or economic history. For example, September celebrates the apple and potato harvest while October takes the sugar beet harvest as its theme.
The town had a sugar refinery from the early 20th century until 2004, and words like sugar cooperative, white, crystal and sugar beet recall this. The municipality welcomes every new resident to the district with one tea towel from the series of 12, together with a small publication about the project. Each month, a larger tapestry version of the tea towel is hung in the district’s glass pedestrian bridge, creating ‘a calendar gallery’.
The complex interplay of planes, circles and lines required a high degree of precision in the design and production of the pieces.
De Vet (1974) is based in Pajottenland, Belgium. After attending the art academy in Utrecht, she studied design at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam and spent six months in Melbourne, Australia as an artist in residence. Her work spans printing, digital media, performance and visual art. In addition to her own projects, she works for clients including KPN, de Volkskrant, Paradiso and the Utrechts Conservatorium.
