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Things to sit on!

When is a stool not a stool? Perhaps when it has 'a back'.  But then how big a back?  Is a back that's only a couple of inches high and doesn't support your back, really 'a back'?

I like my stools to emerge from the wood.  I have occasionally made a stool that is fairly regular in its shape with flat surfaces and straight legs but most of my stools are irregular.  I like to see how the wood splits and how I can tease something to sit on out of it. It's the same with the legs of my stools.  They are often very misshapen because the wood says something that I think is worth accentuating.  So, for instance, on the right is a saddle stool I made for The Ships Company in The Longshed in Woodbridge.  I was intrigued by the grain in the front leg as it reminded me of a burbling forefoot on a boat.

handmade three-legged wooden stool made of oak

The next picture shows a stool with an 'almost back' where the wood split and curved up and around.  It seemed such a shame to remove this natural curve so it got incorporated instead. Perhaps good for helping to prevent a somewhat-the-worse-for-wear drinker sliding off the back when they hear the final punchline of an uproarious story!

handmade four-legged wooden stool with a carved seat and made from oak

​Sometimes its worth being explicit and adding a special place for that drink to help prevent accidents.  Here, although the wood started to split nice and straight, the grain suddenly dipped away and then back up. The seat would have felt a bit cramped if I'd shortened it to just the flat area but keeping it long and carving a place to hold a pint... Well, what more could you ask for in a stool?

handmade four-legged wooden stool with a place to hold a drink made of oak and sweet chesnut

This last example is another one that I made for The Ship's Company from an offcut of one of the timbers being used to plank the ship they are building. I had originally intended to cut the plank in half and make two stools from it. But it had such a beautifully smooth surface on one side, that had been hewn by hand, just using axes, from a cleaved log, that it seemed a shame not to feature it.  So it became a double seater and I purposefully left the bark on to show its relation to the tree from which it was hewn.

handmade six-legged wooden stool for two people made of oak
deatil of a leg on a handmade wooden stool made of oak
handmade six-legged wooden stool for two people made of oak showing the natural bark edge

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