I used to look through Sears and Eaton’s catalogues mainly because there were pictures of women in their underwear. Once in a while, I would accidentally look at some of the home furnishings. What I saw nearly sickened me.
Where did they get those homes from? Nobody I knew lived in one. They were immaculate, in a perverse sort of way. The furniture was new, polished, slick, plastic. There were no signs of life, no clothes, no magazines tossed aside, no half-eaten bagels or half-empty cups of coffee. There was never any chili or soup in any of the pots. There were never any towels hanging half-folded over the sink or bathroom counter.
What was the message here? You were supposed to look at this catalogue and think, “Wow! That’s so beautiful! That’s what our house should look like! That’s what will make our friends think we’re smart and rich!” And you would buy this furniture and put it into your house and for a few days your home would look like a Sear’s catalogue but soon everything would be ugly and messy again and you’d realize that you just don’t measure up to the ideal.
Have you ever seen an Ikea catalogue? Here it is. Here is a picture of a place setting. The glass is half empty—someone’s been sipping. The silverware is scattered around as if someone just got home from work and didn’t have time to lay it out perfectly before the chili boiled over on the stove.
And here’s a picture of a pull-out pantry. By golly—there’s food in there, with the labels showing! And here’s a picture of a shoe cabinet. It’s full of papers and magazines that look as if someone just dumped them there. There’s a backpack beside it on the ground. What’s that doing there? And—can I bear the sight—here’s a bed…. and it’s unmade! Someone has actually slept in it!
Just gazing at the Sear’s ideal, you can sense the overwhelming sterility closing in on you. You get a sense that the customers of this store have no idea of what money is for, so they buy ostentatious, phony, bland, useless ornaments for their homes, and then sit around like manikins all day, admiring their silver-wear and doilies.
Ikea gives you a sense that people actually live in these furnishings. They enjoy them. They sleep on the bed, drink from the glasses, work under the beautiful halogen lights. They store things in the cabinets and eat off the tables. They have busy lives.
Ikea must be the only major furniture catalogue I have seen that shows a man with long hair tending a baby while preparing supper.
The Americans have some things right and some things wrong. They have furniture wrong.