A stool is a raised seat commonly supported by three or four legs, but with neither armrests nor a backrest (in early stools), and typically built to accommodate one occupant. As some of the earliest forms of seat, stools are sometimes called backless chairs despite how some modern stools have backrests. Folding stools can be collapsed into a flat, compact form typically by rotating the seat in parallel with fold-up legs.
The origins of stools are obscure, but they are known to be one of the earliest forms of wooden furniture. [1] [ need quotation to verify ] The ancient Egyptians used stools as seats, and later as footstools. [2] The diphros was a four-leg stool in Ancient Greece, produced in both fixed and folding versions. Percy Macquoid claims that the turned stool was introduced[ where? ] from Byzantium by the Varangian Guard, and thus through Norse culture into Europe, reaching England via the Normans. [1] [3]
In the medieval period, seating consisted of benches, stools, and the very rare examples of throne-like chairs as an indication of status. The stools had two forms: the boarded [4] or Gothic [3] stool, a short bench with two board-like feet at the ends [3] and also the simple turned stool. Turned stools were the progenitor of both the turned chair and the Windsor chair. The simplest stool was like the Windsor chair: a solid plank seat had three legs set into it with round mortice and tenon joints. These simple stools probably used the green woodworking technique of setting already-dried legs into a still-green seat. As the seat dries and shrinks, the joints are held tight. These legs were originally formed by shaving down from a simple branch or pole, later examples developed turned shapes.
Older Scottish texts may refer to a low stool as a "creepie" or as a "creepie-stool". [5]
Three-legged stools are extant from the 17th century[ where? ], as is an illustration of an early turned stool of this period. [6] One of the uses for three-legged stools is for farm workers engaged in milking cows.
Later developments in the 17th century produced the joined stool, using the developing techniques of joinery to produce a larger box-like stool from the minimum of timber, by joining long thin spindles and rails together at right angles. [7]
Several kingdoms and chiefdoms in Africa had and still have traditions of using stools in the place of chairs as thrones. One of the most famous of them, the Golden Stool of the Asantehene in Ghana, was the cause of one of the most famous events in the history of colonized Africa, the so-called War of the Golden Stool between the British and the Ashanti.
The backstool represents an intermediate step between the development of the stool and the chair. A simple three-legged turned stool would have its rear leg extended outwards and a crossways pad attached. [8] Backstools were always three-legged, with a central rear leg.
Turned backstools led in turn to the development of the three-legged turned chair, where the backrest was widened and supported by diagonal spindles leading down to extensions of the front legs. In time these diagonal supports became larger, higher and more level, leading to the turned armchair design. [8]
In modern times, the term "stool" has become blurred, and many types now have backs.
These are particularly common among bar stools, tall stools for seating at a counter, often fixed in place. These are a development of the chair as much as the stool, made more compact to allow dense seating around a serving table or counter. They may even be referred to as "backless chairs". One type of stool, Windsor-back stools, which "are popular in traditional homes", has a back. [9]
Such backstools developed from around 1900, with the advent of modern materials such as bentwood and later the bent steel tube of Marcel Breuer's work at the Bauhaus. These isotropic materials no longer depended on the shapes of traditional joinery, as developed for earlier stools, and so strong backs could be attached arbitrarily, without relying on particular leg placements for strength.
Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating (tables), storing items, working, and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflects the local culture.
A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. It may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and may be padded or upholstered in various colors and fabrics.
An ottoman is a piece of furniture. Generally, ottomans have neither backs nor arms. They may be an upholstered low couch or a smaller cushioned seat used as a table, stool or footstool. The seat may have hinges and a lid for the inside hollow, which can be used for storing linen, magazines, or other items, making it a form of storage furniture. The smaller version is usually placed near to an armchair or sofa as part of living room decor, or may be used as a fireside seat.
Chairs are known to have existed since Ancient Egypt and have been widespread in the Western world from the Greeks and Romans onwards. They were in common use in China from the twelfth century, and were used by the Aztecs.
A footstool is a piece of furniture or a support used to elevate the feet. There are two main types of footstool, which can be loosely categorized into those designed for comfort and those designed for function.
A Windsor chair is a chair built with a solid wooden seat into which the chair-back and legs are round-tenoned, or pushed into drilled holes, in contrast to other styles of chairs whose back legs and back uprights are continuous. The seats of Windsor chairs are often carved into a shallow dish or saddle shape for comfort. Traditionally, the legs, stretchers, and uprights were usually turned on a pole lathe. Spindles may also be carved, using drawknives and spokeshaves. The back and sometimes the arm pieces are formed from steam bent pieces of wood. Traditional Windsors are typically painted, primarily to hide the different types of wood used in construction, based on their characteristics.
A folding chair is a type of folding furniture, a light, portable chair that folds flat or to a smaller size.
A recliner is an armchair or sofa that reclines when the occupant lowers the chair's back and raises its front. It has a backrest that can be tilted back, and often a footrest that may be extended by means of a lever on the side of the chair, or may extend automatically when the back is reclined.
The forms of Chinese furniture evolved along three distinct lineages which date back to 1000 BC: frame and panel, yoke and rack and bamboo construction techniques. Chinese home furniture evolved independently of Western furniture into many similar forms, including chairs, tables, stools, cupboards, cabinets, beds and sofas. Until about the 10th century CE, the Chinese sat on mats or low platforms using low tables, but then gradually moved to using high tables with chairs.
Turned chairs – sometimes called thrown chairs or spindle chairs – represent a style of Elizabethan or Jacobean turned furniture that were in vogue in the late 16th and early 17th century England, New England and Holland. In turned furniture, the individual wooden spindles of the piece are made by shaping them with chisels and gouges while they are being turned on a lathe. Joiners or carpenters who made such furniture were termed "turners", or "bodgers", hence the surname Turner. Today, turned chairs – as well as various turned decorative elements – are still commonly made, but by machines rather than by hand.
Danish modern also known as Scandinavian modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmark associated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research into materials, proportions, and the requirements of the human body.
Ancient furniture was made from many different materials, including reeds, wood, stone, metals, straws, and ivory. It could also be decorated in many different ways. Sometimes furniture would be covered with upholstery, upholstery being padding, springs, webbing, and leather. Features which would mark the top of furniture, called finials, were common. To decorate furniture, contrasting pieces would be inserted into depressions in the furniture. This practice is called inlaying.
Jennie Alexander was an American author.
A step chair, also called a ladder chair, a library chair, a convertible chair or a Franklin chair, is a piece of furniture which folds to become either a chair or a small set of steps or stairs. Building one is a popular DIY project.
Bruno Rey (1935–2019) was a Swiss industrial designer, best known for the Rey chair model 3300, one of the most successful Swiss chairs of all time. Over the course of his career, Rey built and rebuilt many other diverse projects. He designed rooms and exhibitions, like the control room at the Mühleberg Nuclear Power Plant in the Canton of Berne; designed gardens and plant containers made from fiber cement for the company Eternit AG.
Rowac was a hardware factory founded by Carl Robert Wagner in 1888 in Chemnitz, Germany which most notably produced furniture for industrial use. Carl Robert Wagner is regarded as the inventor of the steel stool, which among other things was chosen for the workshops and classrooms of the Bauhaus Dessau. Today, mainly stools, chairs and cabinets carrying the Rowac name are traded as antiques.
Multifunctional furniture is furniture with several functions combined. The functions combined vary, but a common variant is to incorporate an extra storage function into chair, tables, and so forth, making them so-called storage furniture. It more efficiently uses up living space. Lack of space can be an important reason for choosing such furniture, but combination furniture is also seen in larger homes for more space-efficient utilization. Historically, furniture with transforming mechanisms was called "mechanical furniture".
A corner chair is a chair design with a four-corner seat arranged in a way that one corner, sometimes rounded, frequently with a cabriole leg, is positioned in front while the rounded or angled backrest is aligned with the two back sides of the seat.
a Turned stoole...This is so termed because it is made by the Turner, or wheele wrioght all of Turned wood, wrought with Knops, and rings all over the feete..., reprinted in Chinnery 1979 , p. 87
