Ever since the second half of the twentieth century, jewellery design has been one of the most eye-catching disciplines in the Netherlands. Operating outside the demands of a large-scale market and the limitations of industry, and thanks to the remarkable talent of such designers as Gijs Bakker, Emmy van Leersum and others, in those years the item of jewellery was to become the reference point for renewal and experiment in the Netherlands. Marjan Unger was invited to present a selection of jewellery within the context of The Ruin and thereby to reveal the working method and perspective of this group of ‘self-producing’ designers. 

Nowadays the questions that were raised at the time – status, gender, wearability – seem to have declined in importance, while renewal and experiment are more connected with technological changes. All the same, elements of the thinking of the period are still very much alive within what is now called social design. According to some, social issues are not only necessarily connected with the imaginative quality of a subdiscipline, as in the case of jewellery in the past, but have more connection with a democratised design field and are strongly orientated towards DIY and bottom-up practices. For The New Institute this is sufficient to start up not only a research and exhibition programme, but also a studio programme in which such theoretical practices can be fully addressed. The first programme will be launched next month in which the question of social design as a social methodology will be examined on the basis of three design questions.

Curator: Marjan Unger/Het Nieuwe Instituut