Artek Aalto table 81B, birch

Artek’s table 81B is Alvar Aalto’s timeless design from 1935. The main material of the rectangular dining table is solid birch.

Artek tables are based on different combinations of Alvar Aalto’s L-legs and tabletops. Aalto introduced the bent L-leg for the first time in 1933, and it became a standard component in his furniture designs. Judging his importance as a designer and architect, Aalto considered the development of the L-leg as his greatest achievement – he even called the L-leg “the little sister of the architectonic column”. The development of the L-leg was revolutionary because it solved the problem of attaching legs directly to the tabletop in a completely new way – the leg could be fastened with screws directly to the tabletop, and the result was a simple but very solid structure.