Studio Job’s humorous, cartoon-like drawings have made Insects a design classic. The tea towel with the all-over insect pattern was one of the first products sold under the ‘by TextielMuseum’ label. For the design gallery Chamber in New York, the pattern was translated an interior fabric in 2014.
Studio Job and the TextielMuseum have collaborated since 2003. The first insect tea towel (2004) was an instant hit. The studio’s ostensibly innocent images often conceal deeper layers. In the case of Insects, these are transience and destruction. Nothing is what it seems. The pattern has since been produced in different colours and products.
In 2014, Studio Job was invited to curate the inaugural collection for the Chamber design gallery in New York. Inspired by the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities, founder Juan Garcia Mosqueda invites a different curator to assemble an exclusive collection every two years. Studio Job brought together not only products, textiles and furniture by different artists but also designed new pieces and created limited editions of previous designs. They commissioned graphic designers Julius Vermeulen, Swip Stolk and Wim Crouwel to make a series of black and white textiles in the TextielLab for vintage furniture. They also translated their Insects pattern into an interior fabric, which they used to upholster Theo Ruth’s Penguin Chair (1957).
The studio reduces form and colour to strong contours in its graphic drawings, a style that is ideally suited to textile designs.
In 2000, Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel (both graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven) founded Studio Job, currently one of the Netherlands’ most in-demand design studios. Studio Job produces one-off furniture and interior objects for private clients, companies and museums, and has its own exhibition space in Antwerp. The duo’s style is highly expressive. They often tell a story of good and evil with graphics, symbols, pictures and drawings. They have designed for Swarovski, Barneys, Land Rover, Alessi, Moooi and Pepsi. They were also behind the now famous ‘Insects’ pattern, which appears on tea towels and plaids for the label ‘by TextielMuseum’.
