IKEA - Bringing design to the masses

The aesthetic form is there for all. And not just for the museum

IKEA Catalog, 1979  

In a couple of weeks I might be off to IKEA in Munich. Not to IKEA, the store, but to IKEA, the exibihion at the Pinakothek des Moderne 

Democratic design - IKEA  is the first ever show about the Swedish company that has shaped the concept of bringing design to the masses like no other. As understood by IKEA officers and designers, democratic design means that having a limited budget should not prevent people from creating a beautiful home, with practical and sensible elements. This groundbreaking concept make them one of the most impressive success stories of the 20th century, and the world's biggest producer of furniture and decorative objects. It is was estimated that one in 10 Europeans are conceived in an IKEA bed.

 

A perfectly good example of bringing the design to the masses and democracy of design is the PS Jonsberg series of vases, created by Hella Jongerius.    

Hella Jongerius is a Dutch designer whose innovative creations are sold by high end design companies, shuch as Droog, Vitra or Donna Karan  She heads her own company, JongeriusLab, which designs and produces unique ceramics, textiles, tableware and furniture.

 

Jongerius is known for her attention to detail, and also the individuality she puts on each piece. Almost all of her objects involve handwork during the production process. “Normally my work is made in small editions, which gets expensive”, she admits  (the limited edition of the repeat big pot can cost something like EUR7000; a unlimited production, like the NON temporary vase can be EUR400).

For the Jonsberg vases, Jongerius wanted to integrate her love of handwork with the high volume production requirement IKEA imposes. “I was searching for a way to create something mass-produced while preserving attention to the richness of details,” she says. “I wanted to make a product that is uniform in shape, but that reveals that it must have been made in a traditional workshop because there is no industrial production technique for this particular ceramic process. This was possible because Ikea has manufacturing companies in China, which produce very high-quality handwork, but can also deal with large volumes”.

 “The 4 vases all have an identical shape, a familiar archetypal vase form, which for me is a blank sheet of paper on which I can design. Every vase has a pattern that represents a particular part of the world, and each pattern is also assigned its own ceramic technique. It reveals the great diversity of the ceramics world. Moreover, it shows four different characters and traditions that produce completely different vases, despite the fact that the basic form is one and the same”.

 

I am the proud owner of several of those vases, that were something like CHF50 each (about EUR40):

I love them!