Repeat Textile

Collaboration with designers has become a hallmark of the New York–based textile firm Maharam, adding dynamic partnerships with renowned contemporary designers to their important archive of midcentury reissues. Maharam often commissions designs from practitioners whose primary work lies outside textile design—an approach that results in a wide range of critical artistic engagements with the medium. Hella Jongerius’s 2002 Repeat Dot takes inspiration from her close observation of the manufacturing process in textile mills producing Maharam designs. Focusing on the technology and by-products used to create woven fabrics, this work recalls the perforations of punch cards used to program Jacquard looms, overlaid with white screen-printing that mimics the codes and handwritten notes used to make changes to fabric samples. Her Repeat series also has a unique means of application as the repeats of different patterns of the design occur at wide intervals, offering users a level of customization by choosing to use one or more of the patterns in a single piece of fabric.