With its blue denim upholstery, TAJT was youthful soft furniture that fit perfectly into the laid-back zeitgeist of the time. It was a combined sit, rest and lounge piece comprised of two 90×90 cm cushions which were 18 cm thick. The cushions were buttoned together by leather buttons in leather straps. If you put them on top of each other you had a sitting height of 36 cm. They could also be laid side by side to form a simple mattress. TAJT also came with a rolled cushion with a chrome-plated tubular stand, which could be locked to keep the cushion in place.
This innovative furniture was designed by Gillis Lundgren. TAJT was given pride of place on the 1973 catalogue cover, and was presented enthusiastically: “An invitation to the lovely, soft world where people and furniture spend time together in an easy-going, unconventional, status-free environment. Great, brand new furniture for 225 well-spent kronor (EUR 22.50). … TAJT is a fun, exciting piece of soft furniture. An easy chair, a bed, a kind of tête-à-tête sofa. … De-stress on TAJT, listen to music on TAJT, watch TV on TAJT!”
A few pages later are the words: “Denim, or jeans fabric. It leads the thoughts to leisure time and leisure jobs, to comfy, summer-light jeans. And everyone knows what jeans are! Finally, furniture with denim fabric! Robust, durable quality that comes mainly in blue or brown, and above all for the cushion-soft furnishing for the colourful tube range.”
The text makes it sound as if the world had just been waiting for denim furniture. But the story behind TAJT is far more practical. Ingvar Kamprad had bought kilometres of jeans fabric from a factory in China, and it was up to the product developers and designers to find a use for it. Lars Göran Peterson, head of purchasing at IKEA, said in a 2017 interview: “Ingvar Kamprad said ‘You need to start making products because the fabric will be here soon’. It’s interesting that denim is well-known in clothing, but no one has thought of using it for furniture. That fresh thinking, going outside the box and thinking differently, is very typical of Ingvar and IKEA.”
TAJT was in the IKEA catalogue for a full nine years, up to 1981.
