When it comes to plywood, it’s easy to dismiss the whole category. After all, it’s just a ho-hum material made from layers, used when function comes before quality. Right? Think again.

HISTORY
Plywood was first patented in the U.S. in 1865, but it came into its own in the 1930s and ’40s when improvements in synthetic resin adhesives meant that the stacked-and-glued wood veneers that make up most kinds of plywood became sturdier than ever before. Plywood began to go high-end when midcentury designers like Charles and Ray Eames and Alvar Aalto started experimenting with laminating, finishing, and bending techniques that yielded simple but beautiful pieces. In particular, Finnish designer Aalto is known for his designs in Baltic birch plywood, which is sometimes called Finnish birch.

LIVING ON THE EDGE
Most plywood is made of so woods, such as pine, spruce, and fir, glued in stacks of three to five veneers. But the Russians and Finns have long constructed their ply using birch (a hardwood) with about twelve veneers, resulting in an edge that looks striped with subtle color variations. Many designers like to forgo finishing the edges of their Baltic birch pieces in order to display the attractive layers. The edge, which shows that each veneer is placed at an angle perpendicular to the one below it, also hints at the plywood’s strength: The crisscrossing grain makes the wood much stronger than solid wood and is less apt to expand or contract with changes in moisture. The more layers, the stronger the sheet.

NATURAL BEAUTY
It’s not just about strength; Baltic birch is also prized for its luminous surface. “More than other kinds of plywood, Baltic birch is uniform in tone and color so you can let it stay its natural color or you can stain it,” says Eyrich Stauffer, a woodworker who co-teaches an annual Baltic birch furniture design class at Yestermorrow, a woodworking and architectural craft school in Vermont. And unlike some lower-quality plywoods, the imperfections—knots and the like—on higher-grade pieces of Baltic birch are carved out of each layer and patched. This means the wood will have no unexpected void in an exposed edge or weak spot just under the surface of the sheet, keeping thickness uniform across the board.