Ikea published an online archive of every catalog since 1950, with a search engine and PDF downloads of each. Pictured below is the cover of the 1968 edition; you can't get the Fåtölj in red leather anymore, but it's still sold as the Havberg nearly 60 years on. [via]
For over 70 years, the IKEA catalogue was produced in Älmhult, constantly growing in number, scope and distribution. From the 1950s when Ingvar Kamprad wrote most of the texts himself, via the poppy, somewhat radical 1970s and all the way into the scaled-down 2000s – the IKEA catalogue always captured the spirit of the time. The 2021 IKEA catalogue was the very last one printed on paper.
I'm surprised to learn that they no longer print the catalogs! If Ikea can't justify printing catalogs, no-one can.
Previously:
• How The Whole Earth Catalog influenced Japanese magazine design
• When you could buy a monkey from the Sears mail-order catalog
• TBD: appreciating a catalog of the banal gadgets of tomorrow
