The STOCKHOLM glass-door cabinet came along in 2006, but had originally been designed by Tomas Jelinek as a bar cabinet back in 1996, as part of the third STOCKHOLM collection. The cabinet hovered, in a way, on a sleek legged base. A round glass piece in the doors was supposed to provide a clue to the drinks stored inside. But the cabinet worked just as well as a glass-door display cabinet, and that was how it was presented in 2006, when it was part of the fourth STOCKHOLM collection.
The 2008 IKEA catalogue featured the beautiful cabinet made of golden-brown stained, clear-lacquered oak veneer and solid oak. It was of high quality, and was inspired by the style of the best of Swedish and Central European furniture tradition. Ever since it began in the mid-1980s, the aim of the STOCKHOLM collection has been to make simple, beautiful furniture that will last for decades. Solitaires previously reserved “… for a few: the rich. Ordinary folk had to make do with poor copies or nothing at all!” as IKEA put it in the very first STOCKHOLM collection brochure. The first collection was created by Tomas Jelinek and designer Karin Mobring, and in later STOCKHOLM collections they were joined by other designers.