IKEA x Sabine Marcelis launch sculptural lamp and furniture collection ‘VARMBLIXT’

For nearly seven decades, IKEA has managed to offer good designs at affordable prices. The company, founded in 1943 by late business tycoon Ingvar Kamprad, is built on and driven by the intention of facilitating the accessibility of bespoke functional and sustainable furniture and homeware products across economic groups. Anyone who has visited an IKEA store and experienced their exhibition-style experiential showcase knows that the interior settings curated and advertised by the brand can be personally recreated using IKEA products at affordable prices. Realising the words of its founder, “IKEA is not the work of one person alone. It is the result of many minds and many souls working together through many years of joy and hard work,” the brand has over the years collaborated with various designers and artists as well as suppliers, to build a library of items that involve and engage the end user by inviting them to assemble the products purchased. Its research and design lab, SPACE10, further supports experiments by creative individuals and studios that envision a beautiful, sustainable and accessible tomorrow. Adding to the brand’s rich catalogue of products—which also includes collectables by Virgil Abloh and solar gadgets by Olafur Eliasson—is the VARMBLIXT collection by Rotterdam-based industrial designer Sabine Marcelis.

The Dutch designer’s recent collection, comprising rugs, serveware, and lighting design objects, offers a chance for all to experience and live with designer indoor objects that double as sculptures and are otherwise available only as limited edition pieces. Each of the lighting pieces in the collection—a combination of opaque and translucent materialities—is configured to interact with and respond to direct and indirect light, natural and artificial beams. “I wanted to take an unexpected approach to explore the idea of how lighting functions within the home and to inspire people to consider new shapes and elements which blend into and highlight different types of interior spaces in new, bold, and artistic way”, says Marcelis.

Sabine Marcelis, born and raised in New Zealand, currently resides in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Driven by the desire to explore the properties of different materials and their varied reactions in environments of different natures, she often sculpts objects with a typical visage but an atypical, often magical guise. Trained as an industrial designer, she spans the disciplines of product design, spatial design, and installation design to fashion engaging experiences at varying scales. The VARMBLIXT collection, which features Marcelis’s signature doughnut motif, is another attempt at envisioning objects with anomalous luminosities and textures.

Of the 20 pieces that make up the collection, four lighting items—of which the curvy VARMBLIXT LED pendant lamp and the VARMBLIXT LED wall mirror are a part—will remain available for the long term under IKEA. The VARMBLIXT lamps encapsulate Marcelis’s charming and aberrant process of melding primary shapes and forms to create something new. They operate as lamps when lit up and as standalone sculptural entities when turned off.

The product designer’s creations for IKEA mark the beginning of the brand’s journey in enhancing the indoor lives of people with lamps, lights, and luminaires—by building objects that not only operate to fulfil functional lighting roles, but also tend to have emotional aspects and connections. “Light is a functional thing, but to me, it’s also just beauty. And I believe that if you have something that makes you feel like this in your home, you will live better. To democratise beauty is something we should really think more about,” asserts Chiara Ripalti, product developer at IKEA.

The lamp from the VARMBLIXT collection, hence, inspires an interest in the exploration of light as an agent for the transformation of appearances and experiences of indoor spaces. “Our vision was to continue building off the idea of blending design with sculptural objects in the creation of VARMBLIXT. It’s a collaboration connected to the functional aesthetics of our space while inspiring people to add purposeful and versatile objects to the home”, shares Henrik Most, Creative Leader at IKEA.

Marcelis’s trademark motif, the seamless doughnut, is apparent in two servewares and a lamp from the collection. Describing the build of the VARMBLIXT LED lamp, which can be mounted on a wall or placed on a table, the Dutch designer shares, “When the light passes through the orange glass, it makes the soft doughnut-like shape shine with a warm glow. It’s a magical sight that catches the eye – regardless of if it’s on a table or hanging on a wall. The typical wall at home is often white, and I wanted the lamp to blend in so that you notice the play of shadow and light a lot more.”

The play of light and shadow also manifests in the drinking set that is part of the collection. Coloured in hues adjacent to the rays of the sun, the translucent servewares leave room for the beverages poured into them to activate their look. The rugs, on the other hand, are also inspired by the warm orange hue that washes over the earth when the sun sets. “It’s about bringing warmth into the home not just through lighting, but also in a broader sense. Through material, through colour, and through elements that encourage warm interactions,” shares Sabine. The VARMBLIXT collection will be released across IKEA stores in February 2023.