Pour out a bottle of Glögg.
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, died over the weekend at the age of 91.
Sure, we sometimes cursed Kamprad’s ubiquitous creations — sitting in our living room, half-drunk and surrounded by indecipherable assembly instructions for an Ekby JÄRPEN and bewildered as to why we still had three screws and a wooden dowel left over. But Ikea’s cheap and aesthetically inoffensive stylings helped us become adults who owned their own furniture rather than inherited whatever their friends, family and neighbours were throwing out.
Over the years, we’ve gradually replaced most of our Ikea furniture with sturdier, less-Ikea-looking items. Our attraction to raw pine, much like sleeping on a futon mattress and decorating walls with framed Gustav Klimt posters, has dimmed in old age.
We still maintain a few items from the Swedish retailer — the discontinued Expedit shelf, which perfectly holds a sizeable record collection, a couple Fado table lamps, which really hit above their weight in terms of stylishness and price, plus an assortment of glassware, silverware, serving trays and containers, which linger in our kitchen like a lower back tattoo we can’t bring ourselves to remove once and for all.
Ikea’s shadow looms large, like a ridiculous Pax wardrobe. But like Ingvar Kamprad, we’ve moved on. Mostly.
RIP, du sexig bastard.
