Artek x Hender Scheme
Some collaborations surprise you at first glance – and then, on closer look, feel completely logical. Artek × Hender Scheme is one of those.
Artek has stood for 91 years for the furniture of Alvar Aalto: clean lines, honest birch wood, a quiet confidence that never needed to be loud. Hender Scheme, the Japanese label that has worked with vegetable-tanned leather out of Asakusa, Tokyo's traditional shoemaking district, since 2010, shares that same restraint – only through the craft of the shoemaker rather than the joiner. Founded by Ryo Kashiwazaki, who deliberately gave his brand a nameless, gender-neutral identity, Hender Scheme today stands for a very particular, very Japanese kind of purism.
The story behind the collaboration is almost accidental: Kashiwazaki, a longtime admirer of Aalto since his student days, once had his Tokyo studio rebuild a Uten.Silo shelving unit in leather, purely as an exercise, never meant for sale. A photo of it found its way to Vitra and Artek. What began as a conversation became five years of collaborative work. "We are shoemakers," says Kashiwazaki, "so we thought: why not make shoes for a stool?"
That is exactly what emerged: the bent birch legs of Aalto's Stool 60 and Table 90C now slip into small, handmade leather covers, inspired by the storm-welt construction used in shoemaking. The legendary A330 Golden Bell pendant light from 1953 has been wrapped in a three-piece leather shade, wet-formed over 3D-printed moulds – three years of development for a single object. Alongside it, a small series of accessories – coasters, a key holder, a clock – take their shape from the organic ceramic plant pots Aino Aalto designed in 1937 for the terrace of her home.
What truly connects Artek and Hender Scheme isn't a shared visual language, but a shared relationship to time: both materials, birch wood and vegetable-tanned leather, grow more beautiful with use, not less. "Try not to treat it too much," says Kashiwazaki of his approach – a line that could just as easily serve as a motto for Opia. A piece of furniture that is only finished after years of use: it's an idea we recognise in every brand we carry.
Global launch on 10th of October available in store at Sihlstrasse 20
