Studio Boot

HART

For ten years, Petra Janssen and Simone Kramer of Social label have been asking well-known Dutch designers to design a product that can be made by vulnerable people who face labour market exclusion. To mark Social label’s anniversary, the duo recently created HART, a new design that is a versatile take on the traditional Dutch tea towel. Designed by Janssen herself, under the Studio Boot umbrella, HART celebrates a decade of Social label by depicting all the emotions from that period in the form of different coloured hearts.

In collaboration with product developer Marjan Van Oeffelt, Janssen devised a complex colour scheme. Almost every row is different, and every third heart in a row is a mixture of the colours of the two hearts before it. Using a combination of eight different yarns, 20 different coloured hearts were created. The fabric is made of organic cotton, with only the last two rows incorporating lurex and acrylic for extra shine. A three-metre length of the fabric was taken to the Salone del Mobile in Milan. The tea towels were then finished in Social label’s Craft studio in Den Bosch. Weavers from the ASVZ in Tilburg, an organisation that supports people with learning difficulties, also made a festive pom-pom for the tea towel’s label.

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