Young Brunette Girl Posing With A Stool In The Blue Bathroom

A stool is one of the earliest forms of seat furniture. It consists of a single seat, without back or armrests, on a base of either three or four legs. A stool is distinguished from chairs by their lack of arms and a back. Variants exist with any number of legs from one to five.
The origins of stools are lost in time although they are known to be one of the earliest forms of wooden furniture. Percy Macquoid claims that the turned stool was introduced from Byzantium by the Varangian guard, and thus through Norse culture into Europe, reaching England via the Normans.
In the medieval period, seating consisted of benches, stools and the very rare examples of throne-like chairs as an indication of status. These stools were of two forms, the boarded or Gothic stool, a short bench with two board-like feet at the ends 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 tenons. 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.
Artefacts of the three-legged stools date back from the 17th century, as does an illustration of an early turned stool of this period.