Thread: A William and Mary Yew Stool

Originally Posted by Christos

How long did it take to complete this?

Actually, I can answer this with a good degree of certainty as it didn't span too many days and I therefore remember the hours quite clearly. Over several days, it took a total of about 8.25 hours – which may have included a half-hour phone call with a certain person.

It seems an awfully long time for a simple stool, but I'm not as quick as when I was working and I had to clear all the stuff from around the lathe onto the bench to turn the legs and then put it all back again so I could chop out the mortices on the bench etc. etc.

I seem to recall knocking out a set of four joyned stools like these for a customer in a day and they had single plank tops pegged onto them rather than stuff-over seats. But that was when I was a good looking chap.

Look away and another project finished.
WW. I have searched the photos of the finished stool for the ovulo moulding on the top rail . The top rails do not have a finish applied as the cover will hide them I guess .Can you point me to the mouding please .

Originally Posted by Peter36

Look away and another project finished.
WW. I have searched the photos of the finished stool for the ovulo moulding on the top rail . The top rails do not have a finish applied as the cover will hide them I guess .Can you point me to the mouding please .

Peter, the moulding is on the stretchers, not the top rails.

"I completed making the top rails and was half way through cutting the tennons on the stretchers when I suddenly realised I had forgotten to scratch the ovolo moulding into them!


In the nick of time – the ovolo moulding."

Yes, the top rails will be covered like the original stool.

Aaah yes . You have worn most of it away to create that aged look.

The pegs project slightly in imitation of period examples

Very nice.! Is the projection due to the long-grain of the pegs shrinking less than the sideways (clumsily put, sorry) shrinkage of the legs/rails etc?

Originally Posted by Blue-deviled

Very nice.! Is the projection due to the long-grain of the pegs shrinking less than the sideways (clumsily put, sorry) shrinkage of the legs/rails etc?

No, the woodworm push them out a little as they squeeze by.

Originally Posted by Woodwould

No, the woodworm push them out a little as they squeeze by.

All those little holes must be quite the devil to reproduce!

I use my worm tool.

That's not the same as the worm tool I use.

Thanks for that WW. I love your WIPs, not just for the 'how I did it', but for the historical info as well.

There is justifiable reason for the long absence of the yew stool from these pages: I can upholster and have done so on many occasions (the most recent being a gout stool I completed in July last year), but upholstery is not my bailiwick. With a job of this gravity, I would sooner entrust an experienced professional to carry out the work.

Unlike upholstered chairs with large encompassing seats on which sitters distribute their weight across the interior of the seat's surface, stools of this ilk are basically perches where the sitter places the greater part of their weight right on the very edge of the upholstery. It is for this reason that covered stools necessitate high quality hand-stitched edges of the sort created by the best traditional upholsterers.

There are plenty of upholsterers who, working amidst piles of foam rubber, synthetic wadding, by-the-yard faux brass nails and coiled air hoses; profess to be competent in traditional upholstery methods, but the oft-sagging evidence belies their claims.

While I was active in Melbourne's antique scene there was one esteemed upholsterer who kept a small shop on the periphery of the antique district and whose meagre tool kit of knives, hammers, stretchers and curiously shaped needles could comfortably be tidied away into a small drawer. His stock in trade was jute webbing, horsehair, spools of linen thread, calico and linen. Eschewing modern materials and practices, his services were frustratingly (for me at any rate) in heavy demand.

It transpires he retired around the same time I closed up my shop, but I tracked him down to his coastal retreat and after some cajoling; he agreed to upholster the yew stool for me. Craftsmen don't like to be hurried and retired craftsmen command complete autocracy, so I knew better than to enquire when I could expect to see the stool again.

I had agonized over a suitable fabric for the cover: Cotton, silk and wool velvet was fashionable in the seventeenth-century for covering chairs and stools (indeed, the original stool I based this copy on was covered with bottle-green velvet), but modern velvets are predominantly synthetic and look and feel nothing like old velvet. Quality silk velvet is available, though costly. Nonetheless, inspired by the ter Borch painting below (most ter Borch paintings of domestic interiors depict velvet-covered chairs, stools and tables, but Curiosity best portrays the sheen of velvet), I did manage to procure some damson coloured silk velvet, but when I draped it over the stool, the colour was totally at odds with that of the yew.

Curiosity by Gerard ter Borch, c. 1660.

England was a prodigious producer of wool during the seventeenth-century, much of it being exported, but the domestic market had a voracious appetite for wool for producing tapestries and carpets. Needlework and tapestries along with turkey work – a type of knotted woollen pile fabric made in imitation of expensive Turkish carpets – were also fashionable for upholstery during this period.

Oak stool with wool work and velvet cover, c. 1700.

I happened to have a mixed petit point/gros point panel, salvaged from an old chair back, which was just perfect for the top of the stool. The needlework depicts a central ho-oh bird amongst stylised foliage. I also acquired a fragment of murrey velvet for the casing.

The yew stool with overstuffed needlepoint seat.

Petit point ho-oh bird amongst gros point foliage.

Reclaimed brass nails finish the bottom edge.

Well worth the wait .
Is the ho-oh bird any relation to the famous woop -woop bird ?

Originally Posted by Peter36

Is the ho-oh bird any relation to the famous woop -woop bird ?

Third cousin twice removed.