In the late 1920s, Alvar Aalto began a long and fruitful professional relationship with Otto Korhonen, who was the manager of Huonekalu-ja Rakennustyötehdas (Furniture and Construction Factory), the company that would go on to fabricate all of Aalto’s subsequent furniture designs. Korhonen had formulated a design for a stacking chair by attaching the chair legs to the sides rather than base of the seat. This concept greatly impressed Aalto who helped Korhonen improve the form of the original chair and refined the design, giving rise to this unornamented, simple and visually economical chair. Made from birch wood, with a laminated plywood seat and back, the Model 11 Korhonen-Aalto chair was in manufacture in time for exhibition at the Jyväskylä Civil Guards House in 1929. It appeared in the Turku 7th Centenary Exhibition of the same year.

This particular example was imported into Britain by the company Finmar, which was founded in 1934 by Philip Morton Shand and Geoffrey Boumphrey, following the success of an exhibition of Aalto furniture that they had arranged the previous year. A plate on underside of the seat reads‘ FINMAR LTD / DESIGN REG / 787811-19 / MADE IN FINLAND’ and next to this is red stamped lettering that reads ‘AALTO DESIGN / MADE IN FINLAND / 501 / 751’.