Artek
Artek was founded in Helsinki in 1935 by the architect Alvar Aalto, his wife Aino Aalto, and their partners Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl. The name is a synthesis of art and technology, the two things the founders believed furniture should hold at once. Aalto's furniture for Artek still rests on the L-leg, which he developed with the manufacturer Otto Korhonen: solid Finnish birch, bent through ninety degrees without a single joint.
