Ryo Kashiwazaki founded Hender Scheme in 2010 in Asakusa, east Tokyo’s old shoemaking district, after working there as a cobbler. The brand is known for sneakers in undyed vegetable-tanned leather that darken and scar with wear. On his honeymoon in Finland, Ryo visited Alvar Aalto’s studio and came away wanting to make his own home accessories. His first attempt was a leather version of the Uten.Silo, Dorothee Becker’s 1969 wall organizer. A friend photographed it and showed it to Artek. The result is the Artek + Hender Scheme collection, eight pieces in leather and birch that took almost five years to finish.
Once the collaboration was on, his first ideas were bags, then skateboards. He dropped both and went back to shoemaking, the thing his studio does every day. “Because our core process is shoemaking, we found that stools can also wear shoes,” he says.
The shoes are leather caps that slip over the L-shaped legs of Stool 60, the 1933 Aalto design. They stop scratches and soften noise, and they cost ¥14,300 for a set of three or ¥18,700 for four (about $90 and $120). The collection’s small pieces, a clock, coasters and a key holder, are made by soaking leather, pressing it between two 3D-printed mold halves and leaving it two or three days to dry.
The pieces sell in limited quantities at Hender Scheme’s Sukima in Tokyo, Artek Helsinki, Artek Tokyo and a few stockists, after a preview in a Marais back alley during Paris’s 105-degree June and a public debut at Vitra’s Tramshed in Shoreditch in September.
Ryo says he hopes to find one of these in an Artek 2nd Cycle shop one day, worn in. That is the whole product. A stool that keeps a record of where it stood.
