Artek Aalto stool E60, smokey blue linoleum – birch

Artek’s Stool E60, also called the Aalto stool after its designer Alvar Aalto, is one of the most beloved icons of Finnish furniture design. The four-legged Aalto stool remains a beautifully ingenious product, its simple form forever modern. The E60 stool serves perfectly as an extra seat and doubles as a compact table beside an armchair or bed, and multiple stools can be stacked into an elegant tower when not in use. This stool combines a light birch wood frame with a soft, matte linoleum seat colored in smokey blue.

First introduced in 1933, the Aalto stool caused quite a sensation in the design world of its time due to its revolutionary L-leg structure. To bend the leg of Aalto’s stool, a piece of straight, solid birch is sawn open at the end in the direction of the fibers, forming the shape of a fan, with thin pieces of plywood then glued in the grooves. This structure makes it possible to bend the wood by heating or steaming it at the desired angle and when dry, it will have a very strong structure that can be easily attached to the seat.