Monday 1 July 2013

The Kamprad-Lovecraft correspondences project





The Kamprad-Lovecraft correspondences are a series of letters exchanged between Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, and H.P. Lovecraft, the master of 20th century Weird Fiction. The letters and a copy of Weird Tales were discovered in 2008 on the farm where Kamprad grew up and date from the summer of 1936. 

Unearthed during construction work, the secreted horde was buried in a shallow grave at the foot of a rowan tree removed to make way for a prefabricated sauna. The letters fell into the hands of one of the farm's residents, Sven Källström, and onto his blog. While they generated some interest among die-hard Swedish Lovecraft fans, they have remained relatively obscure.  

From their content, you can see the impact the exchange had on both Kamprad and Lovecraft and I have used the letters as a starting point for a project at CPG in Southwark Park. I am humbled to have received a written response to the letters from eminent Marxist political theorist Fredric Jameson, together with a contextualising introduction, both of which are accessible here.