Knut Fjaestad (1860-1937)

Inspired by his younger brother Gustaf's so-called "stabbestolar," Knut Fjaestad began to carve wooden furniture around 1907. He had then recently acquired the 18th-century house Bjälbo at Skärsätra farm on Lidingö, and had previously been active as a merchant in Gamla stan in Stockholm. His brother Gustaf Fjaestad had been carving furniture since 1894, when the earliest known "stabbestol" was made. This type of chair was produced and took its shape from a log (stabbe). Unlike his brother, who studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Knut was self-taught. Knut Fjaestad himself called his carved wooden furniture "works of imagination" and first showed them at an exhibition on Birger Jarlsgatan in Stockholm in 1923.