A good example of survivorship bias. I'm sure there's 70 year old IKEA furniture out there too.
I think anyone CAN make a good stool like that if they can find the materials and some hand tools, it's just that nobody can be bothered and nobody wants to pay someone to put in the effort. Or that nobody has access to tools and/or a space to do the work. There does seem to be a bit of a renaissance in woodworking though.
I commonly find second hand IKEA sideboards in teak here in Sweden, mid-century design is still sought after and nicer IKEA furniture from the 60s/70s sells for quite a mark-up.
My office desk is an IKEA butcherblock beech top on IKEA legs, our former dining table. A wedding gift from my mother 33 years ago. I think 70 is entirely plausible. One good sandbank and re-oil and it's good for 40 more.
some of that luckiness is probably due the tree. what we need to do is breed a second generation of especially lucky stools from the same stock.
1. germinate new oak trees from genetic material recovered from lucky stool (1-20 years, say)
2. tend to trees as they mature (40 years)
3. fell trees, craft new generation of stools. (~1 year)
4. use stools until only a handful of lucky stools survive (500+ years)
5. iterate
if all goes to plan, by year 2600 or so the third crop can be underway
I think anyone CAN make a good stool like that if they can find the materials and some hand tools, it's just that nobody can be bothered and nobody wants to pay someone to put in the effort. Or that nobody has access to tools and/or a space to do the work. There does seem to be a bit of a renaissance in woodworking though.