Once upon a time there were more stools in the average house than there were chairs, in fact a chair was originally a ceremonious affair, ratherlike a throne.

One hears the expression “joint-stool” often used of the four-legged stool with stretchers, now much reproduced. The word “joint” here really means “joined”, that is to say the work of a joiner rather than a carpenter, for at one time only joiners were allowed to dovetail and glue, to use mortice and tenon.

Rectangular stools are sometimes called “coffin” stools, on the grounds that they were used to rest the coffin on at funerals. But it is hardly likely that our thrifty ancestors, to whom even a small and simple piece of furniture was a valuable object, would keep a stool for only such a relatively infrequent event.

Antique Collector MagazineAlthough, as has been said, there are many reproductions of these stools on the market, it is surprising how many genuine Jacobean ones there are about, with pillar or baluster legs, stretchers low on the legs, and a shaped frieze just under the seat. Cushions were usually tied on with tape to the tops of the legs, but later, in Georgian days, the stool acquired an upholstered seat with a tasselled fringe. It was also much more sophisticated in shape, with cabriole or “French” legs, hoof or club feet, and in the usual sequence of walnut and mahogany. Some of them had elaborate X-shape stretchers and often a good deal of carving.

From Regency days are to be found some very ornate stools with X-legs in the style of the chairs of the breed, variously called after Dante, Savonarola or Glastonbury. Some of them are in mahogany with brass stringing.

In Victorian days stools came in great variety, starting off with very stately ones in carved gilt wood, and running through many different shapes, usually upholstered with all the different kinds of embroidery popular all through the era. Berlin wool work is the most frequently found nowadays, for this was a craze which found its way into thousands of homes. After centuries of general embroidery the introduction of mass-produced square-meshed canvases, with cross-stitch designs, meant that anyone at all could produce designs showing flowers and foliage, landscapes, horses, birds, cats and dogs. Their work is to be found on firescreens, the backs of chairs and on stools all the way from the mahogany piano stool down to the small hassock-like type. Of the same race, of course, are the long fireside stools on which children love to perch.

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Antique Stools