Artek and Hender Scheme Launch a Collection Built to Age

Artek and Hender Scheme have released a collaborative collection of furniture, lighting, and accessories centred on a single idea: that objects made from natural materials are never truly finished. The collection pairs Finnish birch, the material at the heart of Alvar Aalto’s furniture, with vegetable-tanned leather from Hender Scheme, the Tokyo-based leather shoemaker founded in Asakusa. Both materials develop distinct patinas over time, shaped by use and environment, so no two pieces remain the same.

The collection’s defining gesture is the fitted leather “shoes” applied to the legs of Aalto’s furniture designs: each set is handmade from vegetable-tanned leather, carrying the details and construction logic of Hender Scheme’s footwear. Table and stool tops are also surfaced in leather, left to age naturally and accumulate the marks of use, darkening gradually in the way leather does when handled over years. The pieces were first shown at an installation at the Tramshed in Shoreditch during London Design Festival.

Hender Scheme’s concept of New Craft, where traditional craftsmanship and modern technology produce new outcomes, is applied to Aalto’s Pendant Light A330 “Golden Bell”. The brass shade is reinterpreted in shaped leather using a traditional wet-form technique combined with 3D printing, preserving the lamp’s silhouette while transforming its material qualities entirely. A series of smaller accessories, a clock, key holder, and coasters, inverts the direction of the collaboration, bringing Aino Aalto’s organic Riihitie shape into Hender Scheme’s territory, finished with debossed logos marking them as editions unique to the partnership.