Gijs Bakker

Gijs Bakker, born in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, in 1942, was trained as a jewelry and industrial designer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and at the Konstfack Skolen in Stockholm.

Bakker's designs cover jewelry, home accessories and household appliances, furniture, interiors, public spaces, and exhibitions. He has worked for numerous companies, including Polaroid, Artifort, Droog Design, Castelijn, HEMA, Royal VKB, ENO Studio, and recently as creative director for Yii, Taiwan.

Together with design critic and historian Renny Ramakers, Bakker founded Droog Design in Amsterdam in 1993, a Dutch “brand” of products created by an array of international designers. With Ramakers, he was the selector and art director of all products for Droog Design until 2009.

Bakker has also taught design at various schools—among them, Delft University of Technology—for more than 40 years. After teaching at the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) for more than 15 years, in 2010 he was appointed Head of the Masters Program of the DAE.

Bakker established the Chi ha paura...? (Italian for “Who’s afraid of…?”) Foundation in 1996 together with Marijke Vallanzasca. The goal of Chi ha paura...? (CHP) was to open the international design world to the possibilities for jewelry as more than a decorative fashion accessory and to challenge mainstream resistance to these ideas in contemporary jewelry.

In his current design projects Bakker investigates the relation between craft and design. Since 2009, he has also explored this theme in his role as creative director for HAN Gallery, formerly known as Yii.

Gijs Bakker travels around the world to present workshops and lectures about his own work, Droog Design, CHP, and Yii (HAN Gallery) and is frequently a member of juries.

Bakker’s work is represented widely in international public and private collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of FIne Arts, Houston; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Royal College of Art, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Designmuseo, Helsinki; Die Neue Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam;  Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Museo degli Argenti (the Medici Treasury), Pitti Palace, Florence; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry, Tokyo; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

The recipient of many accolades, among them the 2011 Sanoma Lifetime Achievement Award (Amsterdam), Gijs Bakker was most recently honored in 2012 as “Best International Jewelry Designer,” by the Andrea Palladio International Jewelry Awards.