Shout out to Journeyman IKEA designer Nike Karlsson for designing two of my favourite pieces of furniture I bought this year for my flat: the Stockholm easy chair and dining chair.
Both are made in Europe of solid materials (Birch ply, Linen webbing + Solid and beech veneer respectively) but what I really love about them although they are in conversation with famous predecessors (The easy chair has elements of the Jens Risom webbing chairs from the 1940s and various Alvar Aalto webbing recliners from the 1930s, the bentwood chair feels like it's drawing on the Adolf Loos Museum Chair for Thonet) but neither feel like straight tributes, the easy chair is low and wide in a way more suggestive of asian traditional seating, the bentwood chair has a playfulness that feels more postmodern - both of them feel like truly stand-alone designs and at £279 and £175 each, like they could have been sold for 2 or 3 times that price.
This is what the Stockholm collection is for, a place for designers like Karlsson who have been working for the company since 1992 to stretch out and try something expressive in the way that the IKEA normally can't accommodate and it's great to see how well his contributions hit the mark, they've given me a lot of joy.
Honory mentions: Paulin Machado's Bauhaus-esque rug design and these hand-blow wine glasses designed by Ola Wihlborg
