FRAMA Adam Stool: Steel, Leather, Two Lives

The FRAMA Adam Stool is a steel-framed, leather-topped stool designed by Toke Lauridsen for FRAMA in 2010, built as compact everyday seating that also works as a side table or a step. Objena carries it in its original raw-steel finish from AUD 830, and in the 2022 Hender Scheme collaboration edition — stone-grey steel with vegetable-tanned leather — from AUD 670.

A steel-and-leather stool from 2010

Lauridsen built the Adam Stool around two materials doing two different jobs: a steel frame for structure, and a natural leather seat for the part of the object a body actually touches. FRAMA lists the H50 version — the height Objena stocks — at 50 cm high, 35 cm wide and 25 cm deep, with the legs spread to 37 cm by 24.5 cm at the base for stability. Both materials ship in a raw finish rather than a lacquered or sealed one: FRAMA is explicit that the steel may carry original rust traces and the leather will show natural irregularities, since neither has been treated to hide what the material actually looks like. It is made in Lithuania.

One stool, three jobs

FRAMA designed the Adam Stool to work as a dining stool, a side table, or a low perch next to a desk — the H50 height is sized to sit at a standard dining table or workspace rather than a bar counter. A hole cut through the leather seat is a functional detail rather than decoration: it gives the stool a handhold, so it can be picked up and carried between rooms the way a smaller, lighter object would be, despite the steel frame. That portability is part of why a single stool design has stayed useful enough, across fifteen years, to be worth reworking rather than replacing.

The 2022 collaboration: Hender Scheme's second life

In 2022, FRAMA partnered with Hender Scheme, the Japanese leather-goods label known for vegetable-tanned leather sneakers and accessories, on a wider collection of furniture and home objects. Niels Strøyer Christophersen, FRAMA's founder and creative director, said of the brief: "We wanted to include the categories Frama continuously focuses on: furniture and home objects." The Adam Stool was one of the pieces chosen for the collaboration rather than a new design commissioned for it — FRAMA's own product listing credits it as "Design by Hender Scheme x FRAMA (Toke Lauridsen), 2022," keeping Lauridsen's original authorship intact. The result swaps the raw steel frame for Hender Scheme's signature stone-grey steel and pairs it with the label's natural, vegetable-tanned leather in place of FRAMA's own leather stock — the same H50 dimensions, the same carrying hole, a different material voice.

Living with raw steel and leather

Because neither finish is sealed, care is mostly about restraint. FRAMA recommends cleaning the leather seat with a soft cloth or a dry brush, applying a leather cleaner and wiping edge to edge when it needs more than dusting, and buffing out scratches rather than trying to prevent them entirely. The steel frame takes pH-neutral soap and water on a sponge or cloth — nothing abrasive, nothing that would strip the raw surface it was designed to keep. FRAMA states plainly that both materials will patinate and darken over time; a stool bought today and a stool bought in three years will not look identical, and that is the finish working as intended rather than the finish failing.

Objena carries the original Adam Stool in raw steel and natural leather at AUD 830, and the Hender Scheme edition at AUD 670. Both sit inside the wider FRAMA story — a Copenhagen furniture house that keeps returning to the same handful of honest materials rather than reaching for new ones.

Three questions

What is the FRAMA Adam Stool made of? The original H50 is a steel frame with a natural leather seat, both left in a raw finish — FRAMA states the steel may show original rust traces and the leather will show natural irregularities, and that both patinate and darken with use. The 2022 Hender Scheme edition keeps the same steel-and-leather construction in a stone-grey frame with vegetable-tanned leather.

Who designed the Adam Stool, and what is the Hender Scheme edition? Toke Lauridsen designed the Adam Stool for FRAMA in 2010. In 2022, FRAMA and Japanese leather-goods label Hender Scheme reworked it as part of a wider furniture and home-object collaboration, credited on FRAMA's own product page as "Design by Hender Scheme x FRAMA (Toke Lauridsen), 2022."

Can the Adam Stool be used as more than a stool? Yes. FRAMA describes it as working as a regular stool, a dining stool, a side table or workspace furniture, sized to sit alongside a standard dining table or desk. A hole cut into the seat is there specifically to make the stool easy to carry from room to room.