Brueton Bar Stools

Initially known as Spanish Metal Arts — a supplier of fencing for stately homes on Long Island — the principals at New York furniture manufacturer Brueton were artistically minded from the start, ensuring that their furniture company would become a major player in the world of stylish, modern stainless steel-based design. The company’s sculptural glass-topped dining tables and vintage mid-century modern chrome-framed armchairs are welcome additions to any contemporary interior.

Brueton got its start with the Manufacturers Hanover Trust building in Manhattan. When award-winning architect Gordon Bunshaft of engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) was designing what would become a modernist marvel in the 1950s — a structure that traded sleek glass facades for the stone columns typically associated with banks — SOM worked with Spanish Metal Arts’s Bruno Saudino and Tony Vitale to furnish the property.

For Bruno and Tony, it marked the start of the aptly named Brueton — the pair produced understated side tables and seating made of glass and aluminum for SOM’s project. Revolutionary for its time, instead of traditional narrow windows, the Manufacturers Hanover Trust building was practically transparent — allowing passers-by to see the vault from the outside. (Celebrated photographer Ezra Stoller, who chronicled iconic New York buildings like Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and the soaring silhouette of Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal, shot the building in 1954.)

Much like the material associated with so many of its offerings, Brueton built a reputation of being a strong, dependable and polished manufacturer. The brand worked with designers such as J. Wade Beam, who created cylindrical tables of polished chrome and exquisite marble mirrors during the 1970s, as well as Massimo and Lella Vignelli, a pair of innovative polymaths who ​​left a profound mark on design and wider visual culture.

On 1stDibs, find vintage Brueton case pieces and storage cabinets, tables and seating on 1stDibs.

Stools are versatile and a necessary addition to any living room, kitchen area or elsewhere in your home. A sofa or reliable lounge chair might nab all the credit, comfort-wise, but don’t discount the roles that good antique, new and vintage stools can play.

“Stools are jewels and statements in a space, and they can also be investment pieces,” says New York City designer Amy Lau, who adds that these seats provide an excellent choice for setting an interior’s general tone. 

Stools, which are among the oldest forms of wooden furnishings, may also serve as decorative pieces, even if we’re talking about a stool that is far less sculptural than the gracefully curving molded plywood shells that make up Sōri Yanagi’s provocative Butterfly stool. 

Fawn Galli, a New York interior designer, uses her stools in the same way you would use a throw pillow. “I normally buy several styles and move them around the home where needed,” she says.

Stools are smaller pieces of seating as compared to armchairs or dining chairs and can add depth as well as functionality to a space that you’ve set aside for entertaining. For a splash of color, consider the Stool 60, a pioneering work of bentwood by Finnish architect and furniture maker Alvar Aalto. It’s manufactured by Artek and comes in a variety of colored seats and finishes.

Barstools that date back to the 1970s are now more ubiquitous in kitchens. Vintage barstools have seen renewed interest, be they a meld of chrome and leather or transparent plastic, such as the Lucite and stainless-steel counter stool variety from Indiana-born furniture designer Charles Hollis Jones, who is renowned for his acrylic works. A cluster of barstools — perhaps a set of four brushed-aluminum counter stools by Emeco or Tubby Tube stools by Faye Toogood — can encourage merriment in the kitchen. If you’ve got the room for family and friends to congregate and enjoy cocktails where the cooking is done, consider matching your stools with a tall table.

Whether you need counter stools, drafting stools or another kind, explore an extensive range of antique, new and vintage stools on 1stDibs.