IKEA’s prints have transformed how homes everywhere look

NO FIRM IN history has had as penetrating an impact on everyday design and taste as IKEA. Even if you have never found yourself winding through a shop, absent-mindedly adding “Billy” bookcases, “Rodalm” picture frames or “Glimma” tea lights to a trolley, you will probably have encountered “Stockholm” rugs, “Rinnig” tea towels or “Ektorp” sofas in the homes of friends or in Airbnbs. This is, after all, a company with over 480 shops in 63 countries, which generated around €45bn ($52bn) in sales last year.

IKEA has brought Swedish minimalism to the masses, usually in the form of white or beige mdf (medium-density fibreboard). It is synonymous with practicality and affordability—and spousal arguments over the instructions for assembling flat-pack furniture. Yet “Magical Patterns”, a new show at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, shows off a bolder, brighter side to Ikea’s output by focusing on its textiles.

Fabrics were not a priority for the furniture firm when it was founded in 1943. Many of its soft furnishings came in unsexy shades of grey. But by the mid-1960s, a renaissance in textiles was under way in Europe and America. Fashionable women strutted about cities in shift dresses in geometric patterns. Mini skirts came in paisley and polka dots. Bell-bottom trousers were adorned with psychedelic prints.

ikea’s executives cottoned on to the market opportunity. A new generation of predominantly young female textile artists, including Bitten Hojmark, Inger Nilsson and Vivianne Sjolin, was brought in to create a distinct look that would appeal to the firm’s customers. The result was a playful explosion of colour, print and technical innovation that coincided with Ikea’s rapid expansion. By 1970 textiles accounted for about a quarter of the firm’s sales.

In all, the exhibition brings together 180 different fabrics on loan from the Ikea Museum at Almhult. (It is the first time this collection has gone on show outside Sweden.) Displayed together, the effect is a punch of graphic prints and bright shades—there are few minimal, monochromatic Scandinavian designs here.

Among Ikea’s offerings were the striped “Strix” and “Strax” fabrics, designed by Inez Svensson in 1971 in blue, orange, green, brown, yellow and white. Though they may appear simple, these were the product of engineering experimentation and marked the first time that horizontal stripes had been printed onto fabric. In the past stripes had to be woven in, making the fabric more expensive.

“Strix” and “Strax” kicked off what have since been characterised as the halcyon days of textile design. IKEA drew influential artisans into its operation; aficionados of Scandinavian design will encounter familiar names in the show, including Gota Tragardh, Sven Fristedt and 10-Gruppen (a design collective formed in 1970, of which Svensson was a part). ikea also collaborated with designers such as Marimekko, a popular Finnish textile company, and Zandra Rhodes, a British fashion designer who dressed stars including Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana. No matter who created the print, the emphasis was usually on maximalism and playfulness.

As you might expect from a collection belonging to the brand’s own museum, “Magical Patterns” is particularly instructive in revealing how Ikea would like to be seen. As the title implies, this is an exhibition with an emphasis on the most beguiling and eye-catching prints of the past 60 years. In addition to red-on-pink polka dots, botanical subjects and chevrons, design motifs include multi-coloured buttons and broccoli florets waltzing over Pepto-pink stripes (“Anniken”, 2014). The “Randig Banan” print (also pictured), which combines bananas and stripes, was divisive at the time of its creation in 1985, but is popular today.

Ms Sjolin, who ran the textile department in the 1970s and 1980s, has spoken about how the firm used textiles as a marketing tool. Striking new designs were used to attract press attention, adorn catalogue covers and shop windows and get people talking. Though the daring designs may be the most memorable, the reality is rather more plain: it is the less vivid prints that have driven the multi-billion sales figures year after year.

Nevertheless, Ikea’s impact on textile design is unarguable. From the “Strix” stripes to the “chuck out your chintz” campaigns of the mid-1990s and beyond, Ikea has popularised youthful and contemporary home textiles that have taken over the world, one “Rinnig” tea towel at a time. ■