We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs.
Holiday party invites are still weeks away from going out, but we sure want to secure a spot around Gustaf Westman’s dinner table. The Stockholm-based product designer knows how to throw a good party. From what we saw of his tiny studio apartment, drinks are served in an array of his famously chunky vessels and when the room gets too crowded, you can always plop down on his tubular metal bed—he doesn’t mind.
The next best thing to flying over to Sweden for Christmas and sitting down with Westman is shopping his first collection with IKEA, which just hit the U.S. site and stores. The collaboration spans just 12 pieces, all centered around holiday entertaining as a part of the company’s Vinterfint winter line.
The porcelain plates and cups, with exaggerated rims and playful hues, are a nod to Westman’s original designs, except these start at a mere $10. One of the curvy mug sets was made for serving traditional glögg (or mulled wine) and features an oversized saucer that provides plenty of room for stashing biscuits on the side. Hitting a less practical note is the bouncy vase constructed from a single metal spiral that supports a separate glass vessel.
The most IKEA-y item in the collection is the unusually long platter that Westman specifically designed for serving meatballs. “For so many in Sweden, there’s no Christmas without meatballs,” he says. It just so happened that this launch coincides with the 40 year anniversary of the IKEA meatball, so the cheeky dish, which allows you to display food in a neat row, is all the more welcome.
But as the designer himself notes, this funky plate works perfectly for so many other things. It’s an ideal catchall for collections of tiny objects (coins, batteries, lipglosses, matchbooks). One of our contributing writers, Erika Owen, is even eyeing it as a jewelry organizer. Gift it to the person in your life that’s the trickiest to shop for—they’ll figure out what to do with it.
