Ehlén Johansson

Ehlén Johansson is a Swedish designer who began her relationship with IKEA as an intern in 1984. She studied at HDK, the School of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg, and over nearly four decades created a remarkably varied body of work for IKEA spanning vases, glassware, hangers, wardrobes, and bedroom furniture.

Johansson was part of the landmark IKEA PS project, launched in Milan in 1995. For the second generation of the PS collection in 1999, she contributed interlocking tealight holders, a design demonstrating that modularity and playfulness can reinforce each other. Her most widely recognised later work is the SKURAR series (2011): plant pots and garden accessories in finely cut, white-painted steel, inspired by traditional lace and handicraft patterns. The series brought warmth and romance to a product category typically defined by plain utility.

Johansson draws her inspiration from nature and grounds her practice in democratic design principles, the belief that function, aesthetics, and industrial feasibility must be pursued simultaneously. Her stated position is direct: if an idea does not work in industrial practice, it is not good enough. Her career has been recognised with multiple design awards, affirming that charm and longevity are not privileges of expensive objects.