APATO

APATO Apato brings Japan's finest furniture brands to Australia. The confluence of master craftsmanship and innovative Japanese design.

Apato brings to Australia the finest furniture brands by master craftsmen and designers in Japan. Our exclusive collection features an impressive line-up of products designed by leading designers and emerging young talents and carefully manufactured using both age-old techniques and modern technology to ensure quality and ergonomic comfort.

For your next project - CondeHouse since 1968.One factory in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. Everything CondeHouse makes comes out ...
08/09/2026

For your next project - CondeHouse since 1968.

One factory in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. Everything CondeHouse makes comes out of it.

Hokkaido oak and ash account for about three quarters of their timber, and they have been planting those trees since 2000. Non-toxic glues and finishes throughout.

Hospitality, office, public. There is a dedicated contract range, made in the same factory, from the same timber as everything else they build.

Fifty-eight years of solid timber chairs is its own argument. Sit in one and you can feel where the money went.

Specifying something? Talk to us.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne

Hinode Dressing Table by Monica Förster for Ariake.Hinode means sunrise. Ariake means daybreak. The two names sit inside...
01/09/2026

Hinode Dressing Table by Monica Förster for Ariake.

Hinode means sunrise. Ariake means daybreak. The two names sit inside the same hour, which is the whole idea of the piece: a round mirror rising out of the tabletop like the sun coming up off the water.

The frame is ash, blackened with sumi, the Japanese ink ground from candle soot. Behind the mirror and inside the drawer, aizome indigo. You only find the blue when you open it.

Look at the drawer front. Fine horizontal slats, cut from solid, catching light the way a shoji screen does.

Made in Morodomi, Saga, by Legnatec and Hirata Chair. W1230 · D550 · H960. Natural oak, white oak, smoked oak or sumi ash.

Monica Förster’s first design for Ariake, shown at 3 Days of Design, Copenhagen.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne

Deck Chair + Ottoman. Koichi Futatsumata / 二俣公一 for 石巻工房 Ishinomaki Laboratory .Ishinomaki Laboratory started in 2011, i...
29/08/2026

Deck Chair + Ottoman. Koichi Futatsumata / 二俣公一 for 石巻工房 Ishinomaki Laboratory .

Ishinomaki Laboratory started in 2011, in a coastal city rebuilding after the tsunami. A public workshop where residents could make the furniture their town needed, beginning with benches for an outdoor cinema.

The Deck Chair, designed by Koichi Futatsumata in 2015, is the most structurally ambitious piece to come out of that lineage. It is still made from ordinary two-by-four timber and helical nails. Two crossed frames, a seat height of just 230mm, a long low recline. The ottoman repeats the same logic at half the length.

Nothing is concealed. Every board and every fixing sits on the surface where you can read it.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne

NF-DT01 Dining Table. Norman Foster for Karimoku Case.Foster built a small retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, opposite his ow...
28/08/2026

NF-DT01 Dining Table. Norman Foster for Karimoku Case.

Foster built a small retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, opposite his own house, for friends of the Foster family and the Norman Foster Foundation. A mono-pitch roof, angled steel beams tied together with timber, the structural logic of an American barn. The furniture inside had to belong to it, so he designed that as well.

The NF Collection came out of that house. This is its dining table. Solid oak, a slim top, legs that swell into a soft radius where they meet it.

Look at the corner. The armrest of the NF-DC01 chair slides straight into that angle when the chair is pushed in, so the set closes up and reads as one object.

Three lengths: 1650, 2000 and 2400mm. Pure oak, smoked oak, or grain matte black.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne

A-BS02 Bar Stool and A-SL01 Low Stool. KEIJI ASHIZAWA DESIGN for Karimoku Case.Two stools, two very different rooms. The...
28/08/2026

A-BS02 Bar Stool and A-SL01 Low Stool. KEIJI ASHIZAWA DESIGN for Karimoku Case.

Two stools, two very different rooms. The A-BS02 was drawn for a cafe counter. The A-SL01 was drawn for the guest rooms of BELLUSTAR TOKYO, on the floors above the 45th of Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, with the city running out to Mount Fuji.

What they share is a designer and a habit of subtraction.

Ashizawa spent the first ten years of his career working as both an architect and a steel fabricator, and it shows in what he leaves out. On the bar stool, the seat is lifted slightly clear of the frame that carries it, so the two read as separate parts and the whole sits lighter than its mass. On the low stool, the legs taper away to almost nothing.

Neither has a back. Neither asks for one.

Bar stool: 425 x 350, seat at 650. Low stool: 394 x 331 x 440. Both in pure oak, smoked oak or grain matte black.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne

Kata coat stand. Designed by Rui Alves Design Office for ARIAKE .Kata is Japanese for shoulder. Alves started from the ...
21/08/2026

Kata coat stand. Designed by Rui Alves Design Office for ARIAKE .

Kata is Japanese for shoulder. Alves started from the body: shoulders, feet, and the distance between them. Two planes, one above the other, which is all a coat stand has ever been.

Behind it sit two older objects. The ikou, the wooden stand a kimono is hung over at the end of the day. And the geta, the traditional Japanese raised sandal. A rail on two posts, standing on a plinth that lifts the whole thing clear of the floor.

Made in Morodomi, a furniture town in Saga on Kyushu, where Ariake’s workshops put hand work and precision machining side by side.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne


Dahlem chair. Designed by Konstantin Grcic Design for HOSHINA .Grcic spent more than twenty years making chairs from pl...
21/08/2026

Dahlem chair. Designed by Konstantin Grcic Design for HOSHINA .

Grcic spent more than twenty years making chairs from plastic, aluminium and steel. Dahlem, 2014, was the first he made entirely from wood, and the first he made with a Japanese maker.

You can see why he waited for the right factory. A flat plank of a back, square posts, a low cross stretcher, and nothing hidden. His own line: the construction is legible in all its parts. Lightness and economy are prime motivations.

The geometry has European ancestors, Rietveld and Mackintosh among them. The joinery is Japanese. For a decade you could only buy one in Japan.

Solid oak or black walnut, five frame finishes. Fabric or leather seat.

Made in Japan.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne


Soffio. Designed in-house by arflex Japan R&D for Hoshina.Soffio is Italian for a breath, gently blown. The sofa is a se...
20/08/2026

Soffio. Designed in-house by arflex Japan R&D for Hoshina.

Soffio is Italian for a breath, gently blown. The sofa is a set of soft cubes with a low back and a deep seat, and nothing structural on show. You sink into it rather than perch on it.

There is no designer’s name on this one. arflex Japan has been building Italian furniture in Japan since 1969, at a factory in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. Fifty-odd years of building other people’s designs, then one of their own.

Modular: arm, high arm, armless and seat units, 92 or 102 cm wide, in two depths. Two edge treatments, the piped Bold Line or the sharper Grosgrain. Fabric or leather. The seat core is 15 percent bio-based urethane, the cushions 50 percent recycled microfibre.

Made in Japan.

Now at APATO, Melbourne.
6 Gipps Street, Collingwood.
Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne


Azabu Bench, A-B01. Designed by Keiji Ashizawa for Karimoku Case.In a Japanese house the bench near the door is the piec...
20/08/2026

Azabu Bench, A-B01. Designed by Keiji Ashizawa for Karimoku Case.

In a Japanese house the bench near the door is the piece nobody looks at. You sit on it to take your shoes off, and then you forget it.

Ashizawa took that as the reason to get it right. He works by removing. The seat is a plank, the legs are two boards, the joint is left where you can see it. Nothing is covered up, so the work has to be right. The one steel rod under the seat is the only part that isn’t oak, and you will not find it unless someone points.

Drawn for the Azabu Residence in Tokyo, a house Norm Architects and Ashizawa built around shadow rather than light, after Tanizaki.

Solid oak in Pure, Smoked, Grain Matte Black or Keyaki Brown. 1500, 1800 or 2000 mm. Cushion available separately.

Now at APATO, Melbourne. 6 Gipps Street, Collingwood. Visit us · APATO | Japanese Designer Furniture, Melbourne


Corner House, by InForm.A red brick home on a Melbourne corner block, built around a double-height void that pulls north...
17/08/2026

Corner House, by InForm.

A red brick home on a Melbourne corner block, built around a double-height void that pulls northern light deep into the living rooms.

In the lounge, the Braid armchair by Norm Architects for Ariake. Oak sticks across the back, paper cord braided around each arm, both drawn from bamboo screens and tatami edging. Beside it, the Sake side table by Note Design Studio. Its shape comes from the masu, the square cup used for drinking sake, and the lid lifts off for storage.

At the table, the N-DC04 dining chair in paper cord, by Norm Architects for Karimoku Case.

Build and Design InForm
Photography Timothy Kaye
Styling Madeline McFarlane

Address

6 Gipps Street, Collingwood
Melbourne, VIC
3066

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 5pm
Thursday 9:30am - 5pm
Friday 9:30am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

+61399398449

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