Hella Jongerius Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection is the third installation in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery exhibition series devoted to the permanent collection. Influential Dutch designer Hella Jongerius is guest-curating the installation, which will focus on the Museum's outstanding collection of over one thousand samplers from Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. Cooper-Hewitt has commissioned Jongerius to create for the exhibition a series of ten textiles, entitled Sampler Blankets, which will become part of the permanent collection. Inspired by motifs in the historic samplers and referencing Jongerius's interest in the juxtaposition of craft and industrial processes, the blankets are hand-cut in her studio out of recycled materials and "embroidered" using contemporary technology. Jongerius's textiles and selection of samplers will be shown alongside related objects from all four Cooper-Hewitt curatorial departments and the library, including embroidery tools, embroidery design drawings, wallcoverings featuring embroidery motifs, and penmanship and needlework books.

Samplers began in Europe as embroidered notes used to record and exchange embroidery designs and techniques. Early samplers often served as a repository of skills, knowledge, and design, as well as a method to transmit and reinforce family histories, religion, geography, and historical events from one generation to the next. The motifs and lexicons of stitches preserved in samplers were codified through teaching traditions. At the same time, samplers were personal artifacts of hand production, and often expressed a unique and charming aesthetic in the maker's choices of color, layout, and scale. Samplers are artifacts of an era when leisure activities in the home were central in the lives of most middle- and upper-class women; needlework skills were generally viewed as a sign of culture, moral upbringing, and preparedness for marriage and family. The departure of the sampler as an aspect of women's education reflected fundamental changes in the expectations and roles of women in society.

In samplers, Jongerius sees "the luxury of time that was available for handwork in another era, and the unwinding and learning that took place while practicing such slow and repeated techniques." The vocabulary of stitches and forms found in samplers connects to Jongerius's creation of her distinct design vocabulary, formed by her learning experiences with materials and techniques and the working process of trial and error.

Jongerius trained at the Eindhoven Design Academy in the Netherlands and, early in her career, designed works for Droog, the influential Dutch design collective. In 2000, she founded her own studio, JongeriusLab, and has since been commissioned to design objects for many companies, including Swarovski, Capellini, and Hermès.