Gijs Bakker in Conversation

Biography
Gijs Bakker (born 1942) was trained as a jewellery and industrial designer in Amsterdam and Stockholm. Bakker's designs include jewellery, home accessories and household appliances, furniture, interiors, public spaces and exhibitions.  Together with Renny Ramakers he founded Droog Design in 1993.  Droog is a design studio based on an ever changing network of international designers and contributes to global design debate via projects, exhibitions, workshops, presentations and publications.  In addition, Bakker has been a professor at The Design Academy in Eindhoven since 1987, and has also lectured at the Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem and the Delft University of Technology. 
 
Gijs, you were the keynote speaker at ‘Challenging Craft’, the recent international conference held in Aberdeen to look at new craft.  You are trained as a craftsman – as a jeweller to be precise, yet the Droog Design ethos is very much concept rather than process driven.  How would you define yourself?

(Gijs Bakker) I don’t like craft…..but I am a craftsman!  I trained as a jeweller and I’m still making jewellery.  In fact a book of my jewellery designs is being published next year.  For the Conference I presented an image of a big copper bowl that I designed, and hammered into shape as a student in Stockholm in 1962.  So, this will show that I’m really a craftsman!  But I always hated craft.  I just want to express my ideas and my point and I don’t want to upset or distract people with my sweat and suffering from making the thing.  The way I feel about craft is that it is used by the maker as some kind of escape, to forget things, to isolate themselves, and avoid reality - a bit like an ostrich putting its head in the sand.  It’s for this reason that although I am a jeweller, I have never taught jewellery because I always found it such a narrow world. 

When my late wife Emmy van Leersum and I started in 1965, the jewellers at this time worked in cluttered, dirty and dark studios.  As a rebellion our studio was the opposite.  It was pristine with white work surfaces, as we just wanted to avoid the whole atmosphere of craft.  Fortunately, we don’t have a craft environment in Holland, so it’s easier if you’re Dutch.  In traditional crafts in Scotland, and also the USA I would say, people tend to be insular and retreat into their craft.  The word ‘maker’ always conjures images of woollen socks, doesn’t it?! 

But the legacy of not having a traditional craft environment in Holland has also meant that we haven’t had a fantastic industry, unlike countries such as Italy, where every village has small or big industries of artisans and craftspeople who are able to make beautiful things.  Historically we have been more traders than makers and that is a negative aspect for a craftsman.  But in the 60’s and 70’s a new generation came up and a culture prevailed that said ‘don’t wait on getting a commission if you have an idea – just execute it.  Make it and exhibit it.’  A painter doesn’t wait to get a commission to do a painting, do they?  And that ideology has helped.  So a number of small industries have emerged, where ideas have been produced.  So out of a difficult situation a different generation with the guts and power to do things for themselves has emerged. 

So would you describe yourself as an ‘anti-craft’ craftsman?

I create, but when it comes to actually making, I stopped that around 20 years ago.  I have all kinds of fantastic young makers around me who execute my work.  They are much better at making, as my eyes are not so good these days.  After Andy Warhol challenged the whole notion of the means of production, why are we talking about the division of the idea and production as a problem – it doesn’t make sense.

If I go to countries like Germany, however, they are very suspicious because they believe the designer should also be the individual maker.  The Germans have a great sense for materials and making.  They believe that you have to make it yourself, otherwise it’s not art.  But this opposition doesn’t bother me at all, it probably makes me more determined to continue. 

The innovative ideas that are central to the Droog Design philosophy - can you explain how you explore these via your own jewellery designs?

My jewellery is very experimental.  It has nothing to do with jewellery.  For example I made a piece in 1974 from a thin piece of wire which you put over your arm and it leaves a mark – the older you are the longer the mark stays.  The mark is the important thing, not the actual piece itself. 

Currently, I’ve been buying cheap second hand fake diamante jewellery on my travels.  I then take the cheap pieces and make a real jewellery version from these.  I connect this real version – which is a smaller replica with real stones – to the original diamanté piece.  So, the large version has glass diamonds and the little one real diamonds.  My idea behind this is to question what’s real.  This notion keeps me busy – the notion of what is reality?  I make things only because I think and I see and I can express this in my work.  I’m not making jewellery for clients.  If they want they can buy it, but I don’t care!

How does the approach to your role as a jewellery designer combine or contrast with your role as art director at Droog Design?

The starting point in design and the only important thing is the human being.  It’s never the industry or commerce that has determined the way I design.  I listen to outside influences but I turn it into what I want to and do it the way I want to.  Droog design all their products on this kind of basis.  That’s why people are attracted to us.  Droog Design has exhibited at the Milan Furniture Fair for 11 years now, so we have seen many people from all over the world.  And it has been striking to me that we seem to speak a language that goes across borders. 

Although, in saying this, a Droog retrospective exhibition, and workshop, was recently held in Seoul, South Korea, and I noticed that as individuals the South Koreans approach design differently.  A woman at the workshop showed me a toothbrush that she designed, but it was just very generic, there was little personal input.  But I explained that because their culture was so different to mine, it would be fascinating to see this reflected in their work.  I showed them a Philippe Starck designed toothbrush, which is shaped in a different way and has a pedestal and different packaging.  The point wasn’t that I liked it, but thought that this toothbrush had been re-thought, in a different way.  It was quite a difficult workshop as these designers have not had the same freedom to express themselves. 

How then do you perceive the Scottish approach to craft and design?

I have too little knowledge of Scottish craft to comment.  My knowledge stops at Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  Maybe I should know more about Scottish textiles, because you have a very strong tradition in this area. 
 
Who do you admire in the design / craft world?

I’m still very impressed by the work of Italian designers Gaetano Pesce and Enzo Mari.  And Parisian based designers Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec’s recent ‘Disintegrated Kitchen’ (which challenges the idea of fitted made to measure kitchens) was a very good piece.  And of course there are many exciting young Droog designers? 

Which Droog designers are currently exciting you? 

I am already seeing the third generation of designers in Droog.  I believe that every generation needs its own way of expression, and although new generations usually happen every ten years - at Droog it’s every five years.  The first generation I would identify as being concerned with recycling and giving forgotten materials new meaning, as exemplified in Tejo Remy’s ‘Chest of Drawers’ (1991). 

The second generation were more concerned with working with new materials such as plastics to give these new meaning.  Hi-tech materials were used but were given low-tech treatment.  For example Marcel Wanders ‘Knotted Chair’ (1996) is made from high-tech carbon fibre but uses a simple macramé technique in its construction, and in so doing makes a very strong statement.

Currently we have exciting designers such as Joris Laarman, who has made a ‘Radiator’ element in the form a Baroque relief in concrete.  The radiator is fixed on to the wall and the water system goes through the cast concrete.  It is the perfect mechanism for transporting heat – almost traditional, yet it is given a baroque floral sculptural shape.  The point is that central heating systems have traditionally been designed as minimalist structures in order to make them disappear, and now suddenly it becomes an ornament and gives such a completely new experience.  It was launched in April and we have had such an unprecedented demand.  It also shows that Droog can embrace decoration.

Another new product that I am very proud of is by a young Japanese woman - Mina Wu - who studied at the Reitveld Institute, in the jewellery department.  In her graduation show she did these embroideries where she took torn or worn clothes and instead of repairing them she created embroideries around the worn areas.  For instance she took a pair of worn socks and embroidered colourful dragon motifs on them.  Wall sockets have also been painted with ornamental figurations.  This idea is challenging as it’s taking a product that people normally don’t like - architects usually hate sockets - and now it has become so attractive, like a jewel.  It takes utilitarian objects and makes them beautiful.  It gets a fairytale treatment, like the ugly duckling that becomes a swan.  These young designers are very sensitive to objects that have been ignored.  I like it because this is very much attacking the design world because many people are puzzled.  It’s also very anti-Minimalist by bringing ornamentation into situations where it has been absolutely forbidden previously.

Is this a sign that the seemingly all-prevailing sceptre of Minimalism is on the wane at last?

Don’t get me wrong there are some great examples of the Minimalist approach, but when something has been around too long, then you get a second and third generation, and it becomes a style, and then it goes on too long and becomes tired and played out.  I’m very afraid when things start to become a style.  We had a Droog exhibition in a museum of Israel, and I got scared because it began to look as though we had become established, and that our work was accepted.  Many young people try to copy what we are doing, and this is not what we are looking for.  This happened with my jewellery in the sixties where Emmy van Leersum and I were very successful, but then a new generation came along and based their work on what we were doing.  This is frightening because it is followers that make you a style and that is dangerous.  So I learned early in my career that I look forward and I don’t look back.

Finally, what are your thoughts on the current state of design affairs?

Droog Design was commissioned to present an event – it’s almost like a design Triennale – for Lille Cultural Capital of Europe 2004.  Renny and I visited many designers’ studios to see what was going on and during this process we saw the current young generation.  It’s amazing how effortlessly this new generation can jump from one field to another.  It’s a phenomenon that Renny and I noted and that’s why Renny has called the event Open Borders, because there are no borders.  No borders in terms of profession or countries – these young designers are very free and easy. 

I think this is important as it makes it interesting.  It’s a forest of ideas - all different but with the same kind of mentality, where everything is possible.  And we have used the same criteria in the selection of Open Borders as we do for Droog – that is that it’s always more important to communicate the idea and the concept.  This means that it is always a project or environment or situation conveying a little story instead of something that is just a nice form.  A nice form is something that we can’t handle, it gives distance, whereas people can recognise and communicate with a story well told.  For me design should communicate.  If not, it’s just glossy, pretentious and that’s absolutely what we don’t want. 

‘Open Borders’ is currently taking place in Lille until 28 November 2004.
For more information visit links www.gijsbakker.com and www.droogdesign.nl

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