IKEA Reboots Vintage Furniture & Prints For 80th-Anniversary Home Collection

Despite the countless items that have been unleashed over the years, IKEA continues to turn heads each time it announces a new collection. This time, the Swedish furniture giant is embracing the old and turning it into the new to mark its 80th anniversary.

The Nytillverkad collection revives some of the company’s most treasured archival pieces—a move well-considered as vintage IKEA products have been the objects of fancy of many furniture collectors today. “People seek unique and timeless pieces to add character and style to their homes,” IKEA justifies.

With that, it has reimagined iconic designs, jazzing them up with loud colors and functionality for the next generation of living spaces.

To celebrate the milestone, the brand is returning to its roots by approaching design as simple, practical, and playful, and channeling this ethos into cheerful furniture, bedding, and accessories. The range was presented for the first time at 2023 Milan Design Week, and will hit stores beginning July.

“We’ve designed many functional and beautiful home furnishing products during the last 80 years, and it’s only natural that we get curious about our achievements in the past,” explains Fredrika Inger, Managing Director at IKEA of Sweden. “We are happy to bring back these timeless designs truly appreciated by the customers over the years.”

Karin Gustavsson, Creative Leader at IKEA of Sweden, says each piece from the selection has a story.

The lineup retools the leaf-shaped LÖVET table—first debuted in 1956—in bright orange, blue, and light green and an ash veneer finish.

The reincarnated piece, meant to enliven the modern home, is called the LÖVBACKEN.

There’s also the DOMSTEN stool, inspired by the classic JERRY stool by Karin Mobring, now sporting contemporary colors, a smooth pine top, and metal legs.

Decking cushion covers, bedding, and fabrics is Swedish textile designer Sven Fristedt’s eye-popping KRYPKORNELL pattern, originally the BLADHULT cover for the KLIPPAN sofa of the 1980s.

Not to mention, there’s the BONDSKÄRET, a vibrant coat stand that riffs off the vintage SMED stand with a metal base, instead of plastic, and a locking mechanism for aded stability.

“It was the first thing I drew as a designer at IKEA,” explains Rutger Andersson, who designed the 1978 coat hanger. “Most coat hangers back then were just these big ones in wood, and I wanted to make one that you could flat pack and assemble.”

As Andersson gazes at his original work, he is teleported to the imagination of his young self. “I must’ve gotten the inspiration from a cactus. It looks like a cactus.”

“IKEA was a very good design school for me,” Andersson reflects.

“With Nytillverkad, we wanted to find the icons of the future in the old and create a tribute to our 80-year-long history at IKEA,” elaborates Gustavsson. “It isn’t meant to be a completely curated collection, but accents that could spice things up a bit in the range and in homes. I wanted them to stand on their own as well, like sculptures made to stand in any room”.

Following the July 2023 rollout, IKEA will release more vintage remakes under the Nytillverkad range over the next few years.

[via House Beautiful, Domino, IKEA, images via IKEA]