When the world sits down

Sopaporn Kurz

Special to The Nation

Munich, Germany

 Ikea, the 60-year-old Swedish furniture brand, has in recent decades become so iconic that it's earned a museum exhibition.

 Die Neue Sammlung, the International Design Museum in Munich, mounted "Democratic Design - Ikea" because the home furnishings have had such an influence "around the world, as far as Japan, China and the Middle East", says Colinna Roesner, one of the curators.

 The exhibition - now completed in Munich but moving on to other cities - includes about 150 pieces, half from the museum's own collection and the rest from the Ikea Museum in Sweden and private lenders.

 "It was astonishing to learn that Ikea began working with a designer in 1950, but didn't use that in marketing until later," says Roesner, referring to the brand's decision to identify its designers by name in its catalogues.

 The most important aspect of Ikea, though, is its patronage by the masses.

"Ikea wasn't producing furniture for the happy few but for the largest part of the population. It creates furniture that's well-designed, beautiful and good quality, not something cheap but ugly."

 In doing so, Ikea was moving counter to the trends to make homeware a pricey status symbol.

 Behind Ikea's stance lay ideas like "beauty for everyone", which Ellen Key championed late in the 19th century. "It's no exaggeration to say Swedish society was influenced by this socio-ideological approach," says Roesner.

 One of the exhibition's goals is to show such influences. To achieve this, the furniture is on view against the backdrop of the museum's permanent exhibition. "By doing so, we reduce the absoluteness of Ikea, because we want to show what else was going on at the same time."

 Visitors first encounter a simple, wooden farmer's chair from southern Sweden, evoking the environment in which Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad was raised.

 In 1943 at age 17, the farm boy opened a small business selling wooden odds and ends, from pencils to matches. He later became a distributor for local furniture factories, and then realised he could make the furniture himself.

 Ikea is today the world's largest furniture retailer, with more than 230 stores in 24 countries. It introduces about 3,000 new designs each year, and stocks some 9,000 items at all times.

 Kamprad's big breakthrough was the furniture kit, with components easily transported and assembled.

 "The industrial revolution created a class of workers who had to keep moving to find jobs," Roesner explains. "They needed furniture that was cheap and movable, not like farm furniture, which always stayed in the same place.

 "And whereas they'd always had someone in the village who made furniture, now they had no such relationship. The need was for mass-produced furniture."

 Ikea's flat packs of pieces gave the industry a do-it-yourself aspect. "Customers do the work that sellers would otherwise do, so the price was far cheaper."

 The flat cardboard packages, containing actual components, are also included in the exhibition, and in fact will go on sale when the show closes.

 More than 28 million Billy bookshelves have been sold since 1948. At the museum an example is on display alongside other modular bookshelves, such as the one Bruno Paul designed in 1908.

 "Everything has an ancestor," Roesner says. "Nothing came out of nothing.

"Kamprad would simply go to factories that had the know-how and tell his designers to base their work on what already existed."

 It was Ikea, of course, that made such notions profitable, not just by copying but by responding to customer demand.

 When Swedes became more concerned about the environment, Ikea began recycling the plastic in its Ogla chair and air-injected wood shavings.

 The "flower power" movement, "democracy from below" and post-modernism have all had their influence on Ikea furniture. "Scandinavian modernism" contributed lighter wood, natural surfaces and organic shapes.

 And, for "Democratic Design - Ikea", even the catalogue nods to the masses, taking the form of a newspaper.

 The exhibition is witty and inspiring - and doubtless one of few museum shows where visitors can claim they own the original piece.

BOX

Furniture mover

"Democratic Design - Ikea" has already closed in Munich but will be at the Museum fuer Kunst und Gewerber in Hamburg from November to February and the Hofmobiliendopt in Vienna from March to June next year.