Alvar Aalto For Finsven Birch Drop-Leaf Dining Table

Name: Alvar Aalto For Finsven Birch Drop-Leaf Dining Table
Brand: Alvar Aalto
Rating: 5 (43 reviews)

About the Item

This drop-leaf, gatefold birch, dining table was designed by the Finnish designer Alvar Aalto and retailed by Finsven in the late 1940s. This early model has two drop-leaves that can extend the table 60 inches wide for a dinner party, with one leaf down for everyday or fold away to a console with both leaves down. The versatility along with its minimal space requirements make it perfect for apartments and small spaces everywhere. Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) is a world famous architect and designer. His furniture designs and technical innovations on bent plywood furniture, such as his patented L-legs featured in this table, had a tremendous impact on modernist furniture. Some of Aalto's most iconic designs have sold for record prices at auction and can be found in numerous private collections and famous museums.

Creator:
Alvar Aalto (Designer)
Dimensions:
Height: 29 in (73.66 cm)Width: 60 in (152.4 cm)Depth: 36 in (91.44 cm)
Style:
Scandinavian Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Birch
Place of Origin:
Finland
Period:
Mid-20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1940s
Condition:
Refinished. Wear consistent with age and use. This table has been refinished but there is buckling on the top as shown. The table is structurally stable.
Seller Location:
Brooklyn, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1560241280602

Shop All Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto

An architect and designer, Alvar Aalto deserves an immense share of the credit for bringing Scandinavian modernism and Nordic design to a prominent place in the global arena. In both his buildings and his vintage furniture — which ranges from chairs, stools, tables and lighting to table- and glassware — Aalto’s sensitivity to the natural world and to organic forms and materials tempered the hardness of rationalist design.

Relatively few Aalto buildings exist outside Finland. (Just four exist in the United States, and only one — the sinuous 1945 Baker House dormitory at M.I.T. — is easily visited.) International attention came to Aalto, whose surname translates to English as “wave,” primarily through his furnishings.

Instead of the tubular metal framing favored by the Bauhaus designers and Le Corbusier, Aalto insisted on wood. His aesthetic is best represented by the Paimio armchair, developed with his wife, Aino Aalto, in 1930 as part of the overall design of a Finnish tuberculosis sanatorium.

Comfortable, yet light enough to be easily moved by patients, the Paimio chair’s frame is composed of two laminated birch loops; the seat and back are formed from a single sheet of plywood that scrolls under the headrest and beneath the knees, creating a sort of pillow effect. Aalto’s use of plywood had an enormous influence on Charles and Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen, Marcel Breuer and others who later came to the material.

Concerned with keeping up standards of quality in the production of his designs, Aalto formed the still-extant company Artek in 1935, along with Aino, whose glass designs were made by the firm. In the latter medium, in 1936 the Aaltos together created the iconic, undulating Savoy vase, so-called for the luxe Helsinki restaurant for which the piece was designed.

Artek also produced Aalto pendants and other lighting designs, many of which — such as the Angel’s Wing floor lamp and the Beehive pendant — incorporate a signature Aalto detail: shades made of concentric enameled-metal rings graduated down in diameter. The effect of the technique is essential Alvar Aalto: at once precise, simple, and somehow poetic.

Find a collection of vintage Alvar Aalto stools, vases, dining tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.