Design
Heracleum
Bertjan Pot’s Heracleum makes slender branches carry light and structure together. Its 2010 development and later family retain distinct design and technical contributions.
Objects · people · ideas
Browse the Library
Discover the objects, people and ideas that shaped furniture, from historic pieces to modern designs.
381 entries
Page 8 of 16
Design
Herman Miller Aeron chair
Aeron made an office chair’s supporting surface visible. Where a conventional chair hid foam beneath upholstery, Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick stretched a mesh-like material across an exposed frame.
Design
Hidde armchair
Hidde turns the idea of a catching glove into a broad cupped armchair. Its loose cover lets folds become part of the visible character.
Design
Hille Interplan storage
A small Interplan cabinet can look rather self-contained in a vintage shop. Robin Day’s larger idea appears when you imagine the space around it: another unit, a low bench and several ways to organise the same room.
Design
Hoosier-type kitchen cabinets
Read the Hoosier cabinet as a compact kitchen workplace, from flour storage and an enamel counter to the advertising promise of fewer steps.
Design
Hunzinger woven-wire furniture system
See how George Jakob Hunzinger’s 1876 patent turned textile-covered steel strips, grooved frames and interchangeable parts into a furniture system.
Design
IJhorst stool
Constant Nieuwenhuys’s IJhorst uses a circular top and an open wire-steel base. Its small size makes a geometric structure easy to notice in the room.
Design
IKEA BILLY bookcase
The history of IKEA BILLY, from incompatible earlier shelves to a repeatable bookcase, with the 1978 and 1979 dates explained and a look at its adjustable interior.
Design
IKEA EXPEDIT and KALLAX shelving
A shelf full of records makes the size of an empty compartment surprisingly important. When IKEA replaced EXPEDIT with KALLAX in 2014, that useful opening became the part of the design it chose to preserve.
Design
IKEA GUIDE and BYAKORRE shelving
GUIDE made a bookshelf from slender wire sides and broad laminate shelves. Niels Gammelgaard found an opportunity for colour inside the production process, giving a practical open structure a playful edge.
Design
IKEA IVAR shelving
How IKEA IVAR grew from earlier storage shelving, why its pine frame and visible adjustment holes matter, and how the familiar name differs from the system’s ancestry.
Design
IKEA KLIPPAN sofa
KLIPPAN looks like a simple upholstered box. Its more interesting feature can be taken off: a cover that brings laundry, changing tastes and the possibility of a second life into the design of a sofa.
Design
IKEA LACK side table
Why IKEA LACK is light despite its thick square shape: its connection to door manufacture, the 1979 product entry, and the honeycomb filling in today’s tabletop.
Design
IKEA LÖVET and LÖVBACKEN tables
The little leaf-shaped IKEA table has lived through two very different eras. LÖVET belonged to the 1950s catalogue; LÖVBACKEN brought the outline back in 2013, with a new name and a fresh material brief.
Design
IKEA MOMENT sofa
The wire grid behind MOMENT’s cushions has an unexpectedly practical origin. IKEA Museum connects the sofa to a visit to a shopping-trolley factory, where a different kind of steel furniture suggested a new way to build a seat.
Design
IKEA NORDEN gateleg table
NORDEN changes the amount of table in a room. Its folding leaves are easy to notice; the more revealing detail is underneath, where a leg swings out to meet the surface it will support.
Design
IKEA POEM and POÄNG chairs
The history of IKEA POEM and POÄNG, Noboru Nakamura’s bentwood frame, its separate cushions, and how a familiar armchair uses flexibility as part of its comfort.
Design
IKEA PS metal cabinet
IKEA PS brought the metal locker into the living room by changing its proportions. The low cabinet owes as much to a Danish sideboard and a friend’s record collection as it does to changing-room furniture.
Person
Ineke Hans
Ineke Hans’s Smallroom seating and Drawer Table show a furniture practice attentive to changing activities, from working and reading to making room to eat.
Design
Isokon minimum-flat interiors
Look inside the idea of Isokon’s minimum flat, from fitted storage and a screened sleeping place to the shared facilities beyond the apartment.
Design
J.L. Møller Model 80 Chair
Explore Niels O. Møller’s 1968 Model 80 as a precise timber outline holding two upholstered planes rather than hiding beneath them.
Design
J39 Chair
See how Børge Mogensen's 1947 J39 turns four plain legs, a curved back and a woven seat into a Danish classic whose modesty is carefully designed.
Historic object
Jane Austen’s Writing Table CHWJA:JAH69
Read Jane Austen’s small writing table through its twelve-sided walnut top, the provenance note beneath it and the working life of the Chawton years.
Historic object
Japanned Secretary Cabinet 2014.186
Open British Secretary Cabinet 2014.186 to see how practical storage, imported lacquer, substitute varnishes and printed patterns met on one red surface.