My love for Ikea led me to the Ikea Museum, a paradise for fans: NPR
Alan Diaz/AP
The leaf floated in a candlestick. The leaf-shaped accent table, one of Ikea’s first flat-packed furniture, was frozen in his ascension to heaven, having lost his earthly cardboard and twine packaging. All that was missing from the display was a button to play a choir of angels.
NPR
It was 2013, and I hadn’t traveled from Washington, DC, to Älmhult, Sweden — there Ikea was born in 1943 — for subtlety. I was here to see the Ikea Museum, which was then located in the basement of the Ikea Hotel. Although small in size and scope, the collection was so shameless in its boosterism that it ended with a depiction of an Ikea store on the moon.
It was the perfect place of pilgrimage for an Ikea fan like myself.
Holly J. Morris
Let’s rewind.
Two decades ago, I set out to find the unique in the resolutely uniform Ikeaverse.
I met Ikea for the first time at the age of 23. I marked the store like an indiscriminate chick. The hideous furniture, grouped like herds of gentle, modern cattle, quieted my noisy mind. The directional arrows on the floor and the grid in the warehouse imposed order. The mysterious, Ä and Ö-laden product name were strange, but delightful – a description I aspired to.
To that end, maybe glomming at Ikea was just a means of differentiating myself. Perhaps a devotion to something as aggressively odd as EastEnders memorabilia would have done just as well. But it was at Ikea.
Regardless of my sublimated motivation, I would be the best Ikea enthusiast EVER. Because I lacked the skills to make a chandelier out of Allen keys or something, I vowed to own Ikea items that no one, at least in the US, was likely to have.
I failed to find such an item in Prague. I failed a press tour of a brand new DC area Ikea. A friend failed on my behalf in Madrid. Then I heard about Älmhult.
After a 3.5 hour train journey from Stockholm, I arrived at the Ikea Hotell/Museum. The women at the front desk looked worried. The look on their faces said, “You came from America for this?”
Downstairs in the museum, I saw a graceful, spiraling collection of Lacks, the end table of choice for early adulthood, near a sign heralding Ikea’s embrace of chipboard. I discovered that Ikea once sold pianos and inflatable furniture. I admired the modest flight attendant uniforms worn by Ikea’s personal shoppers in the 1960s.
© Inter IKEA Systems BV
Dazed by the brilliance of affordable Swedish design, I wandered back to the hotel lobby, where I saw some trash cans by the front desk. My heart rate soared when I realized what I was seeing: miniature Ikea watering cans (PS 2002) and small, unassembled, flat-packed Billy bookshelves for sale. I had not come across these items anywhere else.
I left Älmhult with my prizes, finally satisfied.
Since my visit, the Leaf Table has re-emerged as Leaf hill. The museum grew out of the Hotelkällaren and turned into one great attraction. The the catalog ceased publication. And Billy got a makeover.
Not much else has changed. I realize now that Ikea’s sameness is its gift, a refuge from predictability in a world of unpleasant surprises.
So fill a big blue Carry bag with hex key, small pens and frozen meatballs, and join me in a future of blessed conformity.
See you on the moon!