Circular, stackable table of birch and birch plywood, a circular shelf set just below the top of the table. Designed by Alvar Aalto, Finland, 1933

A circular, stackable table with four legs of rectangular section, curved at one end to support the top, which is birch. Below the top, and within the legs, a shelf of birch ply hangs 6cm below the top.

The top is composed of a thin sheet of ply, the upper surface veneered with burr birch. The top is supported on a frame of 8 sections of solid birch which give an apparent thickness to the outer edge of the top of 2.5 cm. Four of the frame sections are cut as arcs of a circle and 4 as trapeze-shaped sections with one curved side. The 8 sections are joined by knuckle-joints. The width of the frame is 4 cm at the centre of each section and 2 cm where they join. In the octagonal cavity within the frame, the top is suppored by a crossed stretcher of solid birch, lap-jointed in the centre and jointed into the back of the arc-shaped framing pieces with double tongues, which are glued into double grooves that run the whole width of the back of these framing sections.

The four legs are raised on metal domes. Each is bent at right angles just below the top, the curve set so that the inner edge of the leg is level with the edge of the top, so that the curve is set wholly outside the diameter of the top. The legs were bent using a technique patented by Aalto in which a series of cuts were made into each leg, along the grain, at one end. These cuts allowed the wood to bend - thin splices of veneer were glued into each cut before bending in order to stabilise the curve. Each leg is attached to the framing and cross-piece with two counter-sunk screws, running upwards. The horizontal sections of the legs extend approximately 13 cm in from the edge of the table. Close to the inner end of each is a cylindrical birch spacer, approximately 2 cm in diameter and 5 cm high. The shallow plywood shelf is attached to the underside of these with a single, countersunk screw in each, presumably running through into the leg.

The table is varnished but not stained. On the underside of sections, where there is not stain, the wood is dark, either because it has been stained or because it is heavily oxidised.

This stackable table in birch wood featured in an exhibition in November 1933 of Aalto's furniture, held at Fortnum and Mason's on Piccadilly. Titled 'Wood only', the show was organised by Philip Morton Shand, the editor of Architectural Review, a member of the influential Design and Industries Association, and a prominent supporter of Aalto. The exhibition proved to be a critical and commercial success and the critic F.R.S. Yorke wrote in the Architects Journal 'I knew Aalto was a great architect, but I had seen a good deal of modern furniture designed by 'great' architects, and it was always the same: expensive because modern, modern because snobbish, and snobbish because expensive. I went to Fortnum and Mason's prepared to find the usual lavish, refined rubbish. It wasn't there. Instead I found the kind of furniture one dreams of'.

The next year Shand and the businessman Geoffrey Boumphrey formed the company Finmar to import Aalto's furniture into the UK. A plate on the underside of this table reads 'FINMAR LTD / Design Registered Patent Applied for / MADE IN FINLAND'. Imported funriture was then regularly sold to both the wholesale and domestic markets and the popularity of Aalto's designs firmly established Britain as his largest export market. However, the popularity of Aalto's designs was perhaps the result of its relative cheapness as much as any notion of 'good design'. F.R.S. Yorke commented that 'were they to depend on selling price alone for popularity, [Aalto's furniture] must have a very big market in a country where 'modern furniture' is regarded as a luxury .'

Alvar Aalto’s spare and elegant designs for furniture first became widely known in Britain when an exhibition called ‘Wood Only’ was held at Fortnum and Mason’s in Piccadilly in November 1933. The exhibition was organised by Philip Morton Shand, the editor of the influential ‘Architectural Review’. The following year, Shand went into partnership with the businessman Geoffrey Boumphrey, under the name ‘Finmar’ to import Aalto’s furniture into Britain. Britain soon became the largest export market for his furniture. Its relative cheapness was undoubtedly a draw, but the fact that he used wood rather than metal, may also have ensured his popularity with purchasers who might have considered tubular steel furniture too radical.

CIRC.518-1974