Dezeen Magazine

Stove chair by Bla Station

Gabriel Tan launches Shaker-inspired stool with Blå Station 

Shaker-style furniture informed this three-legged stool by designer Gabriel Tan, which can be pegged onto a wall to create more space in the room.

Stove chair by Bla Station

Tan originally designed the Stove chair in 2016, when he presented it New York design week. Since then, Swedish furniture brand Blå Station has added the chair to its collection, launching it earlier this year.

After visiting a Shaker village in Massachusetts, Singaporean designer Tan was inspired by the ways Shakers – a religious sect founded in England in the 18th – lived a simple lifestyle.

Stove chair by Bla Station

"I have of course known about the Shakers through design history books but to think about visiting a site where they once lived and where hundreds of artefacts and original shaker furniture are preserved, it blew my mind," Tan said.

"The chair is really about two things I love the most about the Shakers. One, that they hung their furniture and stuff on the wall when they don't use it, and two – the unusual shape of the wood-fire Shaker stove."

Stove chair by Bla Station

Shaker furniture design, typified by its lack of decoration, clean lines and simplicity, has seen a revival in recent years – borrowed by designers including Jin KuramotoPinchNeri&Hu and Torsten Sherwood.

Tan wanted to replicate this minimal aesthetic when designing his stool – creating a simple wooden frame with just three legs and a hole in the backrest.

This hole allows the chair to be lifted up and hung onto a wall-mounted peg.

Stove chair by Bla Station

"I gave myself the target of designing a chair that was small and light enough to be hung on the wall, but not upside down, it had to be hung upright so that it can be displayed like a sculpture," he said.

Despite being only being 63 centimetres, the chair's backrest is designed to provide adequate lumbar support due to its convex seat shape, which is based on the wood fire stoves found in Shaker homes.

Blå Station was established in 1986 and inhabits a former sewing factory on the coast of Sweden. Earlier in the year it partnered with designers Thomas Bernstrand and Stefan Borselius to produce a modular, segmented sofa that won the Editor's Choice award at the Stockholm Furniture Fair. It has also released a chair that measures just 33 centimetres wide.