I am not back to rock solid present on all platforms (decentralised), but I am doing my best.
As for the IKEA phenomenon it was also here in the seventies, and I remember long tedious journeys to this wonderland of cardboard and plywood. Here we are more concerned with design classics from the modernist era in real wood. Especially Finland and Denmark has some very fine traditions in high quality design and every Danish house is packed with PH lamps and Børge Mogensen chairs. The IKEA parts are there too, but regarded the same way as an American would with things bought in Walmart.
Sometimes I find it a bit strange how we obsess over local design, and stuff our living space with it. Older furniture from the fifties and sixties are treated and cost the same as fine antiques, and burglars are systematically targeting chairs, dressers and tables over flat-screen and cash.
We have our fair share in our flat too. In the video on the front of my website I am sitting in a Wegner chair and the small table with the whiskey is designed by Nanna Ditzel. Typically the bookshelf is an age old assembly thing from the seventies that could easily have been bought in IKEA fifty years or more ago by my parents.