At the beginning of the week I got an email from IKEA announcing a Memorial Day sale. This classic modern chair, designed by Noburu Nakamura some 20 years ago (?) was on sale today only, for a super bargain price of $39 each. I could not resist... for both practical and sentimental reasons.Practical: before I left for Puerto Rico I left my bedroom, guest room/study and dining room furniture in storage, but sold practically all my living room ones - and left furniture I had in Puerto Rico there, so, once I moved into my new place I would have nowhere to sit, unless I bought something new, so a couple of those chairs, especially at this unbeatable price seemed like a perfect solution.
A street in Ystad, a well preserved medieval townSentimental: I owned a couple of those - with pale blue cushions - some 15 years ago, when I worked in Poland, but had a seaside apartment in Ystad, in southern Sweden.
Lodz
Poland at that time was still in its early post communist period, and was certainly a fascinating place to work in, but utterly uncomfortable to live in, so every month I worked for about 24 days straight, workdays and weekends, just to be able to escape to my tranquil Swedish seaside paradise for one week, breathe some fresh air ( I worked in Lodz, at that time a heavily polluted industrial city of almost one million inhabitants squeezed like sardines in tiny - and mostly dilapidated - communist era apartments, or crumbling - and equally dilapidated - early industrial ones),
walk on practically empty, miles long beaches, flanked by wild rose hedges,
heather filled meadows and pine forests....
I loved it there... but work - and new adventures took me elsewhere... so now I had to have at least those armchairs again!
On Thursday Disa and I went to IKEA for lunch ( Swedish meatballs with lingonberries!) to preview the various options before today's mad dash, and there, while testing the different types of cushions for style and comfort, I got engaged in an animated conversation with an interesting guy... and made a new friend :-)
4 comments:
I always liked IKEA for inexpensive and interesting dishes, linens, cabinet handles etc. The chair looks great and the price? fantastic! We had a set of Scandesign things in Washington - a display cabinet, chair, loveseat and footrest/storage bin. It was great stuff (but expensive) and not what we thought would hold up well in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico I think inexpensive, practical, and something you don't have to fuss over is perfect. Like your new chair...katrina
Glad you are happy with your new chair, I am loving mine. I remembered to get the Beech not Birch, I like the warm tones of the Beech better. I did end up getting the lighter natural color cushions for the chair and stool, the dark brown was twice as much! No one at IKEA could explain why, it just was. Perhaps later I will buy the brown leather cushions.
I love the photos of you past homes, is that you on the beach? (not Beech LOL)
T.
Hi, Katrina, the closest IKEA to you has opened in Santo Domingo... but, unless you plan to visit the Dominican Republic anyway it would be much cheaper to just fly to Florida to buy some dishes, linens or cabinet handles, especially that Puerto Rico has such a totally uninspiring selection of those things. Better yet, if you feel like adding something new, check the IKEA catalog on line, email me and I get it for you and send in one of those flat rate parcels :-)
Terry, my new chairs (I bought two of them) went straight to storage, unpacked an unassembled, to wait for my next move together with other furniture. I like birch - all my furniture is birch, most of it Finnish (not IKEA), made from arctic birch - a lot more rare , and a lot more expensive than ordinary birch, with interesting twists and swirls in the wood of trees tormented by the harsh arcic winds and other vagaries of arctic weather.
But I love plain birch, too, cool colors, light colors. There is a pronounced difference in tastes between Scandinavians and Southern Belles and it looks like IKEA bought too many chairs and cushions in cool Scandinavian colors for the dark and warm tastes of Atlanta, so the sale prices included some colors - of both wood frames and in cushions - and not the others.
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