This Leather-Wrapped Furniture Makes More Sense up Close (EXCLUSIVE)
Last week, as Paris experienced record-breaking heat, with temperatures peaking at 105 degrees Fahrenheit, a lucky group of invitees found refuge in a back-alley space on Rue de Turenne in the Marais. The cold drinks served in custom leather slings were welcome, but they weren’t the main attraction. On Wednesday evening, Artek and Hender Scheme presented an exclusive first look at their collaboration, ahead of its official unveiling during the London Design Festival this September and its retail launch the following month.
The collection of furniture and accessories is a dialogue on several levels. Between Finland and Japan, between modernist design and contemporary craftsmanship and, most literally, between birch wood and vegetable-tanned leather. Every good dialogue begins with common ground. In the case of Artek and Hender Scheme, it’s a shared respect for raw materials and the belief that their natural imperfections should remain visible over time.
“For me, this means finding the right balance,” says Ryo Kashiwazaki, the soft-spoken designer who founded Hender Scheme in Tokyo in 2010. “Try not to do too much, but also try to add something very small, yet very different.”
Kashiwazaki’s words may sound almost aphoristic, but their meaning becomes immediately clear in the playful yet functional collection. Take the furniture pieces, for instance. The stools and tables — both iconic Artek designs — are fitted with leather “shoes” applied to their “L-shaped” legs and finished with matching leather tops. Both interventions are minimal yet subtly transform the wooden pieces: over time, the patina of the undyed and uncoated leather will record marks of use and take on a darker shade.
The same principle is at work in the Artek x Hender Scheme version of the Pendant Lamp A330 Golden Bell, introduced in the 1950s as a larger variation of the original A330S. Hender Scheme has applied its concept of “new craft” to the hanging lighting device, reinterpreting leather’s brass shade through a process that draws on both traditional wet-forming and 3D printing. “The idea,” Kashiwazaki explains, “is to create something contemporary through a combination of old manual craftsmanship and new technology.”
Other pieces, including a clock, key holder and coasters, flip the equation. Here, Artek’s design philosophy is absorbed into Hender Scheme’s world. All made from vegetable-tanned leather, the accessories adopt the rounded shapes characteristic of Artek’s modernism.
Founded in Helsinki in 1935 by four idealists — husband-and-wife duo Alvar and Aino Aalto, together with Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl — Artek pioneered a human-scale vision of modernism, replacing cold industrial materials like steel with birch wood and rigid geometric lines with soft, organic forms. That vision is reflected in the company’s name — a merging of “art” and “technology” — expressing the belief that good design should make everyday life better. It’s part of what makes Artek and Hender Scheme, though founded eighty years apart, such natural counterparts.
The collaboration itself emerged organically, too. “It wasn’t planned, but more like an accident,” Kashiwazaki says. He’s been a “big fan” of the Aaltos ever since visiting the Aalto House in Helsinki’s Munkkiniemi neighborhood a long time ago.
When Kashiwazaki created a mock-up piece of furniture in Hender Scheme’s four-story Tokyo studio, a mutual friend showed a photo of it to someone at Artek. “They were interested,” he recalls, “and soon offered to have a meeting.” A casual conversation unfolded, with Kashiwizaki visiting Helsinki and Marianne Goebl, Artek’s managing director, flying over to Tokyo. Now, five or six years later, it has grown into a collection that feels as natural as the collaboration itself.
Hender Scheme has previously collaborated with the likes of BEAMS, The North Face, and G-Shock. The label, whose name slightly twists the title of Sandra Bem’s gender schema theory — though trained as a cobbler, Kashiwazaki previously studied psychology and considers Hender Scheme’s name as representative of “surpassing” gender schema — is prolific. Hender Scheme may be most famous for its footwear but it’s created everything from wallets to shoulder bags to to ceramics. This partnership with Artek provides a rare opportunity to explore fresh terrain.
“Every collaboration gives you a new perspective, a new viewpoint that goes beyond the product itself. Through working with Artek,” Kashiwazaki continues, “our team thinks a lot about furniture now, which we hadn’t really done before.”
