
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.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP: by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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