It is a safari chair – a ready-to-assemble, lightweight armchair that was originally used by the British Army in the field. The square DIANA armchair is one of designer Karin Mobring’s most prominent classics. Charlotte Rude and Hjördis Olsson-Une also stayed with IKEA for a long time, creating several popular products such as the ADAM bed and GOGO armchair. The DINO highchair was launched in 1971 and remained in the catalogue for 12 years. Parents could leave their children there to play, while they looked at the home furnishings in peace and quiet. Hjördis and Charlotte also created the famous ball room in the Kungens Kurva store in the early 1970s. And the tests at the Furniture Industry Association went very well. His idea was that the base should be a ring, and the child should sit in a ‘bag’ that was fixed to the seating ring.
But he also knew how to make a safe chair for little ones. DINO was a successful collaboration between the three.īosse knew that many, or even most, highchairs on the market were pretty dangerous. Bosse knew most of what there was to know about laws and norms, technology and furniture testing, while Charlotte and Hjördis had a feeling for innovative, playful design. Thankfully, IKEA had just employed Bosse Wadling, a specialist from the Swedish Furniture Industry Association, who had recently written a standard for safe highchairs. Designing a high chair is not that easy, bearing in mind all the regulations and safety requirements related to children’s furniture. It was one of their very first assignments for IKEA. The DINO highchair was designed by Charlotte Rude and Hjördis Olsson-Une. Even so, AMIRAL designer Karin Mobring always preferred the original. Only the armrests were leather, which brought the price down by 15%. This one had a sand-coloured load-bearing fabric in the seat and back instead of leather, and a thin seating cushion in sand-coloured fabric. A new version that could be flat-packed and self-assembled was therefore presented in the 1973 IKEA catalogue. AMIRAL took a lot of space during shipping and storage, which made it quite expensive. Also, the armchair couldn’t be packed into a flat pack. The saddlery had limited capacity and was unable to make the leather details quickly enough.
But it wasn’t easy to keep up with customer demand for AMIRAL. IKEA bought the parts from the saddlery and sent them to Mitab, an engineering company in Tranås, which made the frame and assembled the overall chair. The seat, back and armrests were solid, high-end saddle leather from Johnssons Sadelmakeri in Killeberg. The AMIRAL armchair was first launched in 1970, when it had a frame in fully welded, chrome-plated steel tubing.