Sori Yanagi

The designer of this stool is Sori Yanagi, who was born in Tokyo (1915). Before Yanagi started on his own, he worked with Charlotte Perriand in her studio in Paris between 1940 and1942. In 1947, he studied industrial design, and he founded his own design studio in Tokyo in 1952.

Yanagi played an important role in modern Japanese design development during the post-war period when the Japanese economy and consumer markets developed rapidly. He was known for merging modernist ideas with traditional Japanese elements in his products; that was his main goal.[Sparke, 2009]The Butterfly Stool (1954) did exactly that. The stool was awarded the gold prize at the Milan Triennial XI in 1957.

Designed after World War II when globalization had a major impact on art and design, the stool successfully blended Japanese architectural thought and calligraphic lines into a modern and transcultural design. The Butterfly Stoolmaterializes Sori Yanagi's philosophy of fusing “handmade” designs with emerging technology. It also illustrates the long-lasting impact of minimalist design in contemporary times during which butterfly stools are still produced and considered to be ‘modern’ and up-to-date in terms of their design.