Bar stool Alvar Aalto Museum collection / loaned by the City of Jyväskylä Designer: Alvar Aalto Designed: 1934 Maker: Huonekalutehdas Korhonen Oy The invention by Alvar Aalto and the joiner Otto Korhonen of bending chair legs from solid wood made it possible for the Aalto stool to be conceived. Thus Aalto achieved one of the main goals of modern furniture design; genuine mass production of furniture. All that was needed now was a board for the seat, the legs and some screws. Joints, which demanded a good deal of time and skilled workmanship, could be abandoned. Tables could be manufactured the same way. The basic Aalto stool is 3-legged. Because of this, even large numbers of them can be stacked and stored in very little space. The first 4-legged stool was a bar stool. In the earliest models, the footrest forming a ring around the stool was made of metal. The seat could be painted, varnished, upholstered, covered in fabric or finished with linoleum. The stool shown here was made in the 1970s.