Living room storage

In 1978 Gillis Lundgren designed BILLY bookcase. A bookcase with such a timeless design and extraordinary ability to store books that it has lived on for decades and generations. That has been designer Susanna Löfgren’s experience of BILLY as well. She inherited her BILLY from her grandmother. It’s a piece of furniture she grew up with, and now she was asked to design a new pattern for BILLY – a pattern she calls ”Open books.”

If there is any piece of furniture from IKEA that people around the world know, it’s BILLY. It would be hard to find a more timeless design on a bookcase, and BILLY, which has existed for more than 30 years, is still incredibly popular.

The bookcase was also popular in designer Susanna Löfgren’s family home – it’s a piece of furniture she grew up with and inherited from her grandmother when she moved from home. Susanna thought it was fun and a bit challenging that she was asked to create a pattern for just BILLY – after all, BILLY bookcase is an IKEA classic. And as such, the project also demanded research into classic literary works.

That’s why Susanna began to study books, both the contents of classic fairytales and the book as an aesthetic object in its own right. She leafed through many different types of books. She turned books in every direction and drew frantically in her sketchpad, which she carries with her everywhere. Her sketchpad was filled with masses of ink drawings of books from different angles. One of the drawings was the open book which Susanna later developed into the pattern she herself calls ”Open books.”

“It’s very rare that we see books in this way. Actually, it only happens when we turn the pages quickly or in the moment when you look for something in a dictionary,” says Susanna and demonstrates what she means by quickly flipping through the pages in her sketchpad with her thumb.

The design, which almost resembles a fan, is itself a rather unusual design within home decorating and Susanna wanted to put her own mark on it, which is why she drew it by hand and then fine-tuned it in the computer. The ink drawing was actually no larger than a square decimetre, and Susanna adjusted the space between the lines so that it would look just like an open book.

When the basic design was finished, it was time to create the pattern. And for this, Susanna looked at large-patterned wallpaper for inspiration and help in getting the pattern to work on something that stands against a wall. It was easier said than done.

“Sometimes, you may think you have the design right in the computer, but it’s not until you see it in actual size and in a room setting that you get a real sense of how it looks,” says Susanna and laughs when she tells about how strange another pattern looked in a test when it was printed in actual size and covered BILLY. But that was not what happened with “Open books,” which was given an attractive frame in the black BILLY and makes the bookcase look just as nice when it’s empty as when it’s filled with books. That was part of Susanna’s plan from the start, because she figured – even if BILLY is designed to be perfect for books, not everyone has so many books that they can fill an entire bookcase with them. Then the shelves should be beautiful to look at if they’re empty, too. Like a pattern that opens up to the fantastic and imaginative world of books.

Designer Susanna Löfgren:“It was really fun to be able to create a pattern for such a timeless bookcase as BILLY. Both classic fairytales and the book as an aesthetic object in its own right were what inspired me when I designed the pattern. I like the way books look the moment you open and flip through them, almost like a fan. It’s very rare that we see books in this way. That’s the idea behind the pattern “Open books,” which when framed in black makes BILLY look as nice without books in it as with.”