Tulip Pyramid

The famous Flower Pyramid, part of the Rijksmuseum’s archive, seems to be a seventeenth-century Dutch invention. However, its form refers to the Chinese pagoda and its motifs derive from those on Chinese porcelain. For her graduation in 2016, Jing He undertook a very personal and intensive research to figure out how she, as a young Chinese designer, had been shaped by various influences. “I began this project to continue the process of replicating and transforming which is the history of the original Tulip Pyramid. I wanted to explore the question of ‘creativity in copying’ and the question of identity. If a Tulip Pyramid were to be imitated nowadays in China – a country which is a mixture of common and private ownership, of collectivism and individualism, troubled by the issue of counterfeiting and appropriating intellectual property – what would the result be?”

“I see myself as a Tulip Pyramid. My origins are in China and I’ve been transformed in the Netherlands into the person I currently am. My education in the Netherlands gave me a new perspective on design. I used my personal experience to ask questions about mass-production and embedded it in a design discourse on originality, authenticity, and copying. For a second pyramid, I imitated and made a collage of references of famous Dutch designers’ iconic works, which I merged with my own former works. Thus I could question the influence of these designers and the educational institutions which have formed me into who I am today. On the top a 3D print of my head claims personal authorship.”