Wolf-Gordon Introduces VEER by Aliki van der Kruijs

VEER by Ali­ki van der Krui­js is Wolf-Gordon’s lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tion with an emerg­ing design­er of impres­sive con­cep­tu­al strength and an inde­pen­dent voice. For this com­mer­cial uphol­stery col­lec­tion, van der Krui­js has explored two- and three-dimen­sion­al space through a decep­tive­ly sim­ple grid motif, the ori­gins of which start­ed with the designer’s pur­chase of an antique kimono tex­tile in Ari­ta, Japan. Van der Krui­js first applied the graph­ic kimono grid to the vol­umes of porce­lain vas­es, which result­ed in dis­tor­tions of the grid. This process inspired her to apply sub­tly manip­u­lat­ed grids to the devel­op­ment of Wolf-Gordon’s uphol­stery tex­tiles, which, in turn, are applied to fur­ni­ture vol­umes. It is this dialec­tic process between 2‑D and 3‑D that yields new pat­tern­ing and imparts rich­ness in the collection’s three pat­terns: FLOAT, TURN and SLIDE.

As in her ear­li­er projects such as ​“Made by Rain”, cur­rent­ly exhib­it­ed in the Coop­er Hewitt’s Design Tri­en­ni­al exhi­bi­tion (5÷9÷2019−1÷20÷2020), Van der Krui­js took an aca­d­e­m­ic and method­i­cal approach to the design of VEER. Van der Krui­js is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how nat­ur­al ele­ments and move­ment can be applied across a range of mate­ri­als. Fol­low­ing a 2017 ceram­ics res­i­den­cy in Ari­ta — the ​“Town of Porce­lain” — the design­er devel­oped a con­cep­tu­al frame­work around the tight grid pat­tern of an antique kimono she found in a mar­ket. Van der Krui­js repro­duced a sim­pli­fied grid from the vin­tage fab­ric on acetate and began to wrap porce­lain vas­es with the pat­tern, lead­ing to over­laps and ​“breaks” in the grid.

Con­cur­rent­ly, Van der Krui­js researched depic­tions of geom­e­try in vin­tage sci­ence text­books from the 1960s, and the work of Ettore Sottsass, whose draw­ings in Metaphors (1972−78) super­posed grids on land­scape pho­tos, sug­gest­ing how a reg­u­lar grid can be wed to an irreg­u­lar topog­ra­phy. The act of cov­er­ing a three-dimen­sion­al object with the two-dimen­sion­al grid was repeat­ed when van der Krui­js applied it to a stone she had quar­ried her­self and retained as a sam­ple to use for inspi­ra­tion, which she calls her ​“philosopher’s stone”. In her col­lab­o­ra­tion with Wolf-Gor­don, van der Krui­js fur­ther devel­oped this work by explor­ing sub­tle manip­u­la­tions of parts of the grid that would yield new pat­tern­ing and texture.

It is cru­cial to our mis­sion that we at Wolf-Gor­don work with artists and design­ers of Aliki’s cal­iber. Her depth of thought and con­cep­tu­al strength bring a rich­ness of ideas to our uphol­stery col­lec­tion that not only ele­vates the dia­logue in our design stu­dio, but that enables us to share with our larg­er design com­mu­ni­ty.

Our abil­i­ty to offer these care­ful­ly craft­ed, high-per­for­mance tex­tiles at price points that are appro­pri­ate for a wide range of com­mer­cial inte­ri­ors makes the entire project even more grat­i­fy­ing.
- Mary­beth Shaw, Wolf-Gor­don, Chief Cre­ative Officer

VEER by Ali­ki van der Krui­js con­sists of three pat­terns and a total of 24 sku’s. The col­lec­tion has a dis­tinct col­or palette of cur­rent and fore­cast­ed blues, reds, browns, olives and golds, as well as neu­trals. The col­or line was ini­tial­ly gen­er­at­ed by van der Krui­js’ pho­tog­ra­phy of weath­ered archi­tec­tur­al mate­ri­als in Ari­ta. High per­form­ing, as well as aes­thet­i­cal­ly com­pelling, Float, Turn and Slide exceed all ACT stan­dards for com­mer­cial uphol­stery tex­tiles and have all achieved 100,000 dou­ble rubs on the Wyzen­beek abra­sion test.

Pat­terns

FLOAT, the first pat­tern that van der Krui­js cre­at­ed for Wolf-Gor­don, is formed by a sim­ple shift of a lin­ear seg­ment of box­es off of the rig­or­ous and con­tin­u­ous grid. From this slight ​“out of line” move­ment comes a new pat­tern of alter­na­tive char­ac­ter which uses a smooth and refined weave to pre­serve its strong graph­ic qual­i­ty. Float is a high-per­for­mance polyester/​nylon con­struc­tion that is offered in sev­en (7) col­or­ways (rust, print­emps, char­coal, white noise, red oxide, buff and azurite).

TURN is a larg­er scale pat­tern that shifts a rec­tan­gu­lar sec­tion of the grid offax­is and super­pos­es it to the reg­u­lar base grid, result­ing in a slight moiré effect. TURN’s manip­u­la­tion is fur­ther empha­sized by che­nille yarns that per­mit one to feel the shift of the grid as well as see it. Turn, a durable polyester/​polyester che­nille tex­tile, is offered in sev­en (7) col­or­ways (fawn, sien­na, sage, teal, lapis, graphite, abalone).

SLIDE evolves the orig­i­nal grid into a more lin­ear com­po­si­tion by elim­i­nat­ing the Y axis. The design’s qual­i­ty is exag­ger­at­ed by a ridge-like tex­ture, while It is cru­cial to our mis­sion that we at Wolf-Gor­don work with artists and design­ers of Aliki’s cal­iber. Her depth of thought and con­cep­tu­al strength bring a rich­ness of ideas to our uphol­stery col­lec­tion that not only ele­vates the dia­logue in our design stu­dio, but that enables us to share with our larg­er design community.

Our abil­i­ty to offer these care­ful­ly craft­ed, high-per­for­mance tex­tiles at price points that are appro­pri­ate for a wide range of com­mer­cial inte­ri­ors makes the entire project even more grat­i­fy­ing. remain­ing high­ly graph­ic. Slide is a stur­dy and luxe cotton/​polyester/​nylon con­struc­tion that comes in a gen­er­ous col­or line of ten (10) shades (eclipse, teal, night, porce­lain, sun­flower, red oxide, fawn, stone, olive, and red umber).

Grids influ­ence every­thing: how we struc­ture, how we think, how we make con­nec­tions. By learn­ing
how they func­tion through study­ing geom­e­try, I have become fas­ci­nat­ed by how we can bend or play
with the struc­ture, and even break free of its con­straints.
- Ali­ki van der Krui­js, Designer