Ineke Hans
Ineke Hans was born in the Netherlands in 1966. She studied at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem and the Royal College of Art in London and graduated in 1991 in 1995 respectively. Her work developed in many different directions, most notably as a designer influenced by sculpture with the industrial experience needed to create commercially viable products.
She spent three years working on mass-produced furniture and product collections for Habitat UK. In 1998 she started working from the Netherlands, where she set up her studio INEKEHANS/ARNHEM, working with a team of assistants. To begin with the emphasis was mainly on furniture. These days the studio designs anything from jewellery to public works of art, interiors and exhibitions, ranging from small-scale to mass production. She also continues to design products for the INEKEHANS/COLLECTION, which is sold internationally.
Ineke Hans is interested in the interfaces between intuition, functionality, poetry and production techniques and the reality of human relationships and habits. Different materials and unusual combinations of high- and low-tech materials combine to serve this interest in her work. Her work investigates the psychological roots of products, perceiving and playing with the interaction between people, objects and space. It also revolves around pictograms and archetypes. Traditional and cutting-edge production methods are used in intelligent and unconventional ways.
She won a Red Dot and Design Plus Awards for an original garlic press designed for Royal VKB in 2005 and anther Red Dot Award for a dish and spoon designed for Royal VKB in 2006. Her work is bought by international design collections. Her clients include Cappellini, Swarovski, Cooper Hewitt Museum New York, MVRDV Architects and the Dutch Ministry of Finance.
