Folding bookcase, Chipboard with birch veneer and plastic laminate

Folding bookcase in four tall, narrow sections. Three sets of three hinges join the sections together, allowing flexible arrangement. Each section with six regularly spaced chipboard shelves and with thicker top and base piece. The internal surfaces covered in pale, olive green plastic laminate, the horizontal shelf edges and exterior with birch veneer.

Given by IKEA

This bookcase is part of a range of forty products by twenty designers launched as the Ikea PS range in 1994. The range featured furniture and homeware by named designers, priced slightly higher than the regular Ikea ranges, but still very competitively for contemporary design. The principles of flat-pack and self-assembly applied to all Ikea ranges were also a feature. The range was united by a common aesthetic, promoting natural materials and flat colours (rather than patterns) and simple forms.
This bookcase is the high version in birch (previously birch and grey).

The folding bookcase was included in "... not so simple", a display of modern European design for the home shown alongside the Cologne Furniture Fair in January 1996. "... not so simple" was subsequently shown at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, 1996 (not including this bookcase), and in the Design Now Room of the Twentieth Century Gallery at the V&A, April to October 1997. This example was borrowed from Ikea for the show at the V&A and was given to the museum for its permanent collection when the exhibition finished. It was acquired as an example of high quality modern furniture designed for mass production.

Historical significance: The minimalist form of the bookcase is typical of the PS range and is an aesthetic which has its origins in Nordic modernist design as well as international design of the late 1980s represented by designers such as Jasper Morrison and James Irvine.

The bookcase is also typical of Ikea products in its versatility - it can be folded in a number of configurations to suit the consumer. Ikea has shown consistent concern with producing flexible furniture to suit modern living spaces which are often small or where rooms may be multi functional.

Previous to the opening of Ikea in Britain, out-of-town warehouse furniture suppliers were perceived as downmarket. Modern design remained elite and unobtainable for the majority of the consumers. Ikea has always acknowledged the designers of their products, promoting awareness of design among customers. The objects bear names rather than model or serial numbers. The cheapness and variety of Ikea products have generated mass market sales since 1987. This demonstrates the new public acceptance of both warehouse shopping and modern design.

Reason For Production: Retail

This versatile folding bookcase was part of a collection of forty products by twenty designers, which the Swedish furniture retail giant IKEA introduced in 1994 under the IKEA PS name. The PS collection objects were characteristically simple, functional and colourful, rather than patterned, and were typical of a new spirit of functionalism that was prevelant in furniture design in the early 1990s. The name of the collection suggests that these objects were an addition to the regular products by the company, and the PS objects were generally more expensive. Nevertheless they were more affordable than contemporary furniture by other makers. IKEA had become well-known for the low cost of its flat-pack furniture but with the PS range it introduced more cutting edge design of a quality that could rival the predominantly Italian manufacturers of contemporary furniture. Through such initiatives IKEA introduced contemporary design to a very broad new market.

W.17-1997