April 3, 2017

Coinciding with Salone del Mobile 2017, Herman Miller and Maharam present “Chromatography: The Colour World of Scholten & Baijings” at Herman Miller in Milan. The colourful exhibition was designed by Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings of Amsterdam-based Scholten & Baijings, and will serve not only as the worldwide debut of three new textiles they created in collaboration with the Maharam Design Studio—Mesh, Tracery, and Pare—but also as the global premiere of the designers’ inaugural furniture collection for Herman Miller—the ColourForm Sofa Group.

Designers Stefan Scholten (standing) and Carole Baijings (seated) pose next to hanging textiles in shades of green.

Scholten & Baijings sculpt in pattern, texture, and colour. When designing furniture, they consider the play of light and shadow, and the geometry of forms that comfortably host a variety of human postures. The ColourForm Sofa Group, Scholten & Baijings’s first furniture collection for Herman Miller, is the perfect expression of its designers’ artistic process. Throughout their practice the designers emphasise multiplicity and combination with their designs, and in their ColourForm Sofa Group, the result is a vocabulary of multiple lounge seating pieces, including two- or three-seat sofas with or without arms, a club chair, ottoman, bench, sectional, and a distinctive tête-à-tête. “We create options and possibilities because a product is produced and reproduced many times,” notes Scholten. “We want to give a feeling to each one that it could be unique.” “And while we want to leave those choices and possibilities to the consumer in the end,” adds Baijings, “at the same time we like to show how it’s nice to combine certain elements or selections to demonstrate how it all can work together.” As intended, each piece of the ColourForm Sofa Group can stand alone or be combined with others to provide a place for work, play, or respite.

Sheets of color samples on a work surface; a hand picks up one.

In “Chromatography: The Colour World of Scholten & Baijings,” the ColourForm Sofa Group will be presented in the new Pare and Tracery textiles, in multiple colourways. Throughout their career as industrial designers, Scholten & Baijings have proved themselves to be acutely sensitive colourists—devising a hands-on, process-oriented methodology to arrive at unique hues and fresh palettes. Reflecting their focus on nuanced colour and refined geometric patterning, the designers’ new products shift from the boldness of their past Maharam collaborations to more intimate textile surfaces that invite further observation.

“Chromatography: The Colour World of Scholten & Baijings” will be on view at Herman Miller at Corso Garibaldi 70 in Milan’s Brera district from 4-8 April, 2017. Herman Miller and Maharam invite the design industry and public at large to experience the exhibition and new introductions in person during Milan Design Week.

About Scholten & Baijings
Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings founded the Amsterdam-based Scholten & Baijings, Studio for Design in 2000. Moving fluidly between artisanal and industrial processes, Scholten & Baijings creates products characterised by a minimalist visual language, a keen expertise in colour, and seamless symmetrical patterning. Their clients include 1616 / arita japan, Georg Jensen, BMW Group/ MINI, Established & Sons, Thomas Eyck, HAY, IKEA, Karimoku New Standard, and Moroso, among others. The studio’s work has been recognized by two ELLE Decoration International Design Awards and four Dutch Design Awards. The studio’s first monograph, Reproducing Scholten & Baijings (2015), was directed by Maharam, published by Phaidon, written by Louise Schouwenberg, and designed by Joost Grootens. It received an ADC Annual Award in 2016.

About Maharam
Founded in 1902, Maharam is North America’s leading creator of textiles for commercial and residential interiors. Maharam is available in the United States, Canada, and Japan; through its Danish partner, Kvadrat, in Europe; through Kvadrat Maharam in Australia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates; and via a network of distribution in the Pacific Rim.

About Herman Miller
Herman Miller is a globally recognised provider of furnishings and related technologies and services. Headquartered in West Michigan, the global company has relied on innovative design for over 100 years to solve problems for people wherever they work, live, learn, and heal. Herman Miller’s designs are part of museum collections worldwide, and the company is a past recipient of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. Known and respected for its leadership in corporate social responsibility, Herman Miller has earned the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s top rating in its Corporate Equality Index ten years in a row, was named a 2016 Top 100 Healthiest Employer, and has earned numerous global sustainability awards. In the 2016 financial year, the company generated $2.26 billion in revenue and employed nearly 8,000 people worldwide. Herman Miller trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol MLHR.