“Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass... There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.
She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large caterpillar that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.”
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, 1865
Away from the bright light, they can be found tucked in the underbrush of the sea of legs and moving blankets. Short and often unassuming, they tend to thrive in this thicket environment, somewhat dark and low to ground. Those that can be identified have fanciful names like Rooster, Butterfly, Pirkka, and Fjord, but many are considered 'wild' and still to be classified, having yet to be designated a proper genus.
I am speaking, of course, not of mushrooms on a forest floor but the stools that have been gathered for this exhibition from Joel Chen's vast furniture warehouses. One hundred and eighteen, to be exact—an edited but still sprawling sampling of this most primordial of furniture type.
Taxonomically, stools have much in common with mushrooms— fungi, until the late 1960s, were classified in the universe of plants, despite having many characteristics similar to members of the animal kingdom: a fungus does not generate its own nutrients for growth, like a plant, but instead relies on symbiotic relationships to the trees and other organisms around it. The stool, too, has been misclassified and relegated to minor importance in the furniture universe, despite its lineage and ubiquity.
The stool, too, has been misclassified and relegated to minor importance in the furniture universe, despite its lineage and ubiquity.
A stool is defined as "a seat without a back or arms, typically resting on three or four legs or on a single pedestal." Its exact origin story is unknown, given how ancient the form is. Various forms of the stool have appeared in ancient Egyptian. Chinese, Assyrian, and Greek literature and imagery. Used by kings and lowly commoners alike, the stool was the primary seating implement from ancient times through the Middle Ages. Often, the throne is the only non-stool seating in the great halls of Europe and Asia.
With the invention of the chair—"a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs"—stools and chairs went down separate evolutionary paths. Chairs evolved into armed benches, sofas, recliners, and the like, while stools became ottomans, pouffes, tuffets, and piano benches. (The taxonomy of daybeds and bean bags are still in dispute.)
It is perhaps what we call the 'milking stool' or ‘barn stool’ though, that we think of when the seat is conjured in our mind: turned wooden legs directly joining a seat, slightly splayed for stability. Though they can have four legs, the three-legged variety provides true balance, especially on uneven surfaces like the floor of a barn. Today, these three-legged wooden stools have become de rigueur in many curated interiors. They can he genuinely scuffed and worn milking stools, rescued from some Pennsylvania farmhouse and elevated to a city loft, or vintage pedigreed examples by Charlotte Perriand, like those originally designed for the ski resort Les Arcs in the 1960s. These recontextualized examples are used for many purposes: to hold a stack of books, a vase of flowers, a small sculpture and on occasion even act as extra seating. For some interior designers, the more the better—these stools are clustered together in groupings of two or three or more, like mushroom decorations on a baked Yule Log. The recent omnipresence of the farm stool has yielded some backlash online—but as with magic mushrooms, stools, too, can be overused and abused.
The recent omnipresence of the farm stool has yielded some backlash online—but as with magic mushrooms, stools, too, can be overused and abused.
Another well-known recontextualized stool genus used in current interiors is the African stool. A staple of high-end flea markets and chic antique shops around the US and Europe, these wooden stools come in simple as well as highly ornate carved forms. Many are from West Africa—Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Mali. These Senofu stools were originally collected by early twentieth century artists, along with African masks, for their elemental, sculptural shapes. Art Deco designers such as Pierre Legrain and Jacques Doucet have used the more elaborate Ashanti stool as a template for their own designs in the 1920s. With a crescent-shaped seat, complex support structure, and flat base, the Ashanti stool has both functional and symbolic uses in the Asante culture. Each stool is understood to be the depository of the owner's soul, and the stool is even depicted on the flag of the Ashanti people. For a fascinating history of colonialism and the Ashanti seat, google: War of the Golden Stool.
Yet another way to classify stools is based on their number of legs, or at least the number of points-of-contact to the ground. The single point-of-contact are some of the most primitive, such as a tree stump or a toadstool. But they are also some of the most futuristic, such as Pierre Paulin's Mushroom or Eero Sarrinen's Tulip stool. As hard is it to imagine, there are also stools with two points-of-contact, if we are to count designs that have sled legs, such as Marcel Breuer's H01 and Vittorio Livi's Onda Incisa glass stool. Those with three and four points-of-contact are too numerous to mention, although the Mezzadro by the Castiglioni brothers can be classified as both two and three points-of-contact, depending on your counting method. It can also be said that the Castiglionis' Sella stool—a bike seat and vertical tube attached to a half-sphere-some- times has no point-of-contact, depending upon the excitement of the sitter as they watch the Tour de France.
The modern period saw a resurgence of the stool form. Early 20th century stools, such as Alvar Aalto's iconic stool from Artek, reflect the period's dictum for minimal living. With three identical bent legs and a round top, Aalto reinvented the tripod milking stool into something that is both stackable and industrially reproducible. Several decades later, Charles and Ray Eames also updated the stool with their signature use of plywood. Molded from a single piece of glued wood veneers, the Eames children's stool is as light and delicate as enoki mushrooms. 20th century stools can be made with traditional materials such as solid wood and rattan, but many push the limits of new materials, as the bent and molded plywood mentioned above. However, perhaps most emblematic to the last century of design are stools produced from molded plastic. Famous examples include the Sori Yanagi-designed Elephant Stool and Anna Castelli Ferrieri's Stooble (a combination of stool and table, and a nod to stools' flexible usage). But much more ubiquitous are those four-legged plastic stools seen throughout Asia, used by street food vendors on sidewalks from Hanoi to Bangkok. These stackable, precisely-made, rotation-molded plastic stools represent the highest form of the stool evolution—"The best for the most for the least." in the words of Charles Eames.
Likewise, the stool, despite its ancient heritage, is only now seemingly coming into its own. One of the largest-known collections belongs to Chen, the furniture collector and dealer with seemingly inexhaustible energy for the proverbial hunt.
As previously noted, the fungus was misclassified for centuries as part of the plant family, despite its rogue characteristics that can be both plant—and animal—like. It wasn't until 1969 that fungi were scientifically deemed their own kingdom, which has been estimated at 2.2 to 3.8 million species; of these, only about 148,000 have been discovered and catalogued. Likewise, the stool, despite its ancient heritage, is only now seemingly coming into its own. One of the largest-known collections belongs to Chen, the furniture collector and dealer with seemingly inexhaustible energy for the proverbial hunt. Joel has what can be described as a 'nose' for good design, whether pedigreed or not—indeed, more than a quarter of the examples shown here are as-yet unidentified, though characteristically of novel form or manufacturing technique. And this selection is but a fraction of the pieces to be found amidst Chen's furniture empire. These stools, unearthed joyfully and intuitively by curators Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong, exemplify both the functional ubiquity of the form and the seeming boundlessness of Joel's prolific collection. Once the denizens of shadows and overlooked corners, they are being brought into the light. This is the time of the Kingdom of Stools.
