Objects · people · ideas
Furniture models and individual historic pieces.
Quadrille’s detachable mirror was part of a practical idea: one piece could serve as a bedroom dressing table or a desk. Its open centre and separate drawer groups make that change possible without rebuilding the furniture.
See how Grete Jalk's 1963 GJ Chair turns two moulded-plywood shells, a narrow gap and demanding lamination into the illusion of one continuous bow.
Discover how Lena Larsson's 1958 Grandessa Rocking Chair for Nesto turns a tall wooden outline, open spindles and long runners into furniture for an active room.
Capisco hardly resembles the padded office chair most people would draw from memory. Its saddle-like seat and branching back come from Peter Opsvik’s interest in allowing a person to change how they sit.
See how Nanna and Jørgen Ditzel's Hanging Egg removes legs, suspends a woven rattan shell and turns sitting into a gently moving room within a room.
Read Hatnefer's low Dynasty 18 chair through its original linen cord, pegged mortise-and-tenon joints, protective symbols and exact tomb findspot.
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.
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.
See how George Jakob Hunzinger’s 1876 patent turned textile-covered steel strips, grooved frames and interchangeable parts into a furniture system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Explore Niels O. Møller’s 1968 Model 80 as a precise timber outline holding two upholstered planes rather than hiding beneath them.
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.
Open British Secretary Cabinet 2014.186 to see how practical storage, imported lacquer, substitute varnishes and printed patterns met on one red surface.
Air-Chair began with a small manufacturing sample: a piece of plastic tube. Jasper Morrison worked from the legs upwards, turning hollow structural paths and thin surfaces into a familiar one-piece chair.