The Butterfly Stool is probably Sori Yanagi’s most iconic design. Its development began in 1954 when Yanagi approached a plywood expert at the government Industrial Arts Research Institute (IARI). The Butterfly Stool consists of two symmetrical seven-millimetre plywood shapes, each made of seven sheets of wood veneer, connected with two brass bolts and a stabilizing rod further down. Its curves recall the stool’s eponymous feature, a butterfly’s wings. Its visual simplicity and few parts belies its technical sophistication however and manufacturer Tendo Mokko needed several years to finalize the design and perfect a manufacturing process. This effort exemplifies the shared interest among Japanese designers and manufacturers in exploiting plywood’s material capabilities – they also used the existing knowledge acquired by Charles Eames, Alvar Aalto and the like – to produce beautiful, innovative furniture. But the Butterfly Stool was practical as well: Its low height made it easily used in Japanese interiors designed for lower sightlines, while its simple assembly and few parts made it easy to ship overseas, which was one reason why the Butterfly Stool became a flagship for export promotions. It made its international debut at the 1957 Triennale di Milano, and by 1958 was in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Tendo Mokko still produces the stool, with an interlude of only a few years.
Sarah Teasley
