Before IKEA: A Quick History of Flat-Pack Furniture Ideas

Mention flat-pack furniture today, and one Swedish giant immediately springs to mind. IKEA has become so synonymous with allen keys, confusing diagrams, and affordable style that it’s easy to assume they invented the whole concept. But the idea of furniture that arrives in pieces, ready for the buyer to assemble, didn’t just pop out of a Scandinavian forest in the mid-20th century. Like most good ideas, it has roots stretching further back, intertwined with needs for portability, affordability, and efficient shipping long before the first Billy bookcase saw the light of day.

Echoes from the Past: Portability and Early Disassembly

The core principle – furniture that can be broken down for easier transport – isn’t radically new. Think about military campaign furniture, popular from the 18th century onwards, particularly among British officers travelling across the empire. These chests, desks, chairs, and beds were ingeniously designed to fold or disassemble into manageable parts, often with brass corners and tough materials to withstand rough journeys. While not strictly ‘flat-pack’ in the modern, mass-market sense (they were often high-quality, expensive items), they certainly embodied the spirit of knock-down design for practical reasons. The goal was mobility, not necessarily cost-saving for the end-user in the way we think of it now, but the engineering challenge was similar: make sturdy furniture portable. Another fascinating precursor is the work of Michael Thonet in the 19th century. His famous bentwood chairs, like the iconic Chair No. 14, were revolutionary not just for their manufacturing technique but also for their distribution. Thonet realized he could ship his chairs disassembled, packing dozens of components into a single shipping crate. This dramatically reduced transport costs and allowed his elegant designs to reach cafes and homes across the globe efficiently. Customers or distributors would perform the final, relatively simple assembly. While not sold directly to the consumer as a kit in the IKEA style, Thonet’s method proved the logistical and economic advantages of shipping furniture in parts.

Patents and Early Experiments

As the industrial revolution progressed, inventors turned their minds to simplifying furniture construction and transport. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw various patents filed for ‘knock-down’ or ‘take-apart’ furniture. For instance, a US patent granted to a certain R.J. Hodges in 1878 described a type of wooden chair constructed from interlocking parts that could be shipped flat and assembled without complex tools, anticipating the core RTA concept. These early iterations often focused on simple items like chairs, tables, or shelving, using basic joinery, interlocking pieces, or simple fasteners. They didn’t achieve mass-market success, perhaps due to manufacturing limitations, lack of consumer acceptance, or simply not hitting the right balance of cost, style, and ease of assembly.

Verified Historical Point: Early patents clearly show the concept existed long before IKEA. For example, US Patent 207,107 granted to R.J. Hodges on August 20, 1878, details a “Knockdown Chair”. The design explicitly aimed for easy assembly and disassembly for shipping or storage. This demonstrates documented exploration of the RTA furniture idea in the 19th century.

These early patents and designs highlight that the *idea* wasn’t waiting for a single eureka moment. It was bubbling under the surface, driven by the ongoing search for efficiency and solutions to the perennial problem of shipping bulky items.

The Interwar and Post-War Push: Affordability and Modernism

The period between the World Wars, and especially the years following World War II, created fertile ground for the flat-pack concept to take root more firmly. Several factors converged:

• Economic Necessity: The Great Depression and post-war austerity measures meant consumers needed affordable furniture. Traditional, fully assembled pieces were often too expensive for young families setting up homes.
• Material Innovation & Shortages: Wartime research spurred advances in materials like plywood and particle board. Post-war, these engineered wood products offered a cheaper alternative to solid timber, which was sometimes scarce or costly. These materials were also well-suited to being cut into precise shapes for kit furniture.
• Modernist Design Philosophy: The rise of modernism emphasized functionality, simplicity, and mass production. Designers were exploring ways to create aesthetically pleasing, practical furniture using industrial processes. The idea of standardized components and user assembly fit well within this ethos.
• Changing Lifestyles: Increased mobility and smaller living spaces, particularly in urban areas, created demand for furniture that was easier to move and perhaps more adaptable.

One significant, though perhaps niche, example from this era is Gerrit Rietveld’s ‘Crate Furniture’ (Kratmeubelen) designed in 1934. Created during a time of economic hardship, Rietveld designed a series of furniture pieces – chairs, tables, bookcases – that could be easily constructed from standardized wooden planks, essentially crate wood. The designs were starkly simple, intended to be built by the purchaser using basic instructions and materials. While more of an ideological statement about accessibility and anti-consumerism than a commercial success, Rietveld’s work demonstrated the potential for self-assembled furniture based on simple, affordable materials.

The Immediate Precursors

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the stage was truly set. Mail-order catalogues in the US occasionally featured simpler items requiring home assembly. In Scandinavia, designers were keenly aware of the need for affordable, functional furniture suitable for smaller modern homes. The manufacturing technology, materials (like particle board), and distribution networks were developing rapidly. This brings us closer to the familiar IKEA origin story. In the early 1950s, Swedish furniture designer Gillis Lundgren worked for IKEA. The oft-repeated tale is that he struggled to fit a table into his car after a photoshoot and had the idea to remove the legs. This supposedly sparked the flat-pack revolution within IKEA, leading to the LÖVET table being sold with its legs detached for self-assembly in 1956. While a pivotal moment for IKEA’s business model, it’s crucial to see this not as the invention of flat-pack, but as a successful *application and popularization* of pre-existing ideas within a company poised for mass-market growth. Lundgren (and IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad) recognized the immense potential – cost savings in storage and shipping, lower prices for customers, and the appeal of involving the customer in the final step.

More Than Just IKEA

So, while IKEA undeniably mastered the art and logistics of flat-pack furniture, transforming it into a global phenomenon, the journey didn’t start there. From the practical ingenuity of campaign furniture makers and Thonet’s shipping solutions to early patents and the affordability-driven designs of the mid-20th century, the concept of unassembled furniture evolved over time. It was a gradual convergence of need, technology, and design thinking. IKEA’s genius lay in refining the process, optimizing the logistics, designing specifically for the flat-pack format, and marketing it brilliantly to a world ready for affordable, functional, self-assembled furnishings. The allen key might feel like a modern curse, but the idea behind it has a history far richer and longer than many realize.