The comprehensive Labyrinth project by Studio Job is dominated by a green and white labyrinth pattern. The TextielMuseum commissioned Studio Job to design a carpet, interior textiles, scarves, tea towels and tableware using the various techniques in the TextielLab.
The idea for a fabric with a labyrinth pattern goes back several years, when the designers were commissioned by an Italian furniture manufacturer to cover an armchair with the pattern. The commission did not go ahead, but the idea remained and, at the TextielMuseum’s invitation, the labyrinth pattern was finally realised on various textiles using a range of techniques such as tufting, weaving and printing.
The archetypal green and white colour scheme refers to the English labyrinths with their clipped green hedges and white gravel paths. The labyrinth itself is a metaphor for searching but not finding. The entire installation, as seen in the 2008 exhibition ‘Van Labyrinth tot Big Mama, Projecten uit het TextielLab’, is now part of the TextielMuseum collection.
The challenge with this comprehensive project was giving the green and white the same colour value in each application. The labyrinth pattern also had to be altered to fit the size of each different product.
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’.
