<u>Design</u>
A stool of carved and gilt wood upholstered with a valance and cushion, covered in red velvet and remnants of earlier figured velvets, and trimmed with knotted and tufted braids. The carved beech frame has pierced, tapered legs carved with foliage and lambrequins, joined by scrolling X-form stretchers which meet at a central vase finial. The valance is fitted to an upholstered lip on all four sides, within which the box-shaped cushion sits. The gilding of the frame has been stripped to reveal the original water-gilded surface. The figured velvets and the trimmings are original to the stool, but the worn red silk velvet is later. The trimmings on the cushion differ from those on the companion stool (W.15-2009), and neither precisely reflects the original arrangement. The underside of the cushion is covered in red silk over a red worsted.
The legs and stretchers are carved with foliage and flower-heads in relief against a cross-hatched ground – the main motifs carved in the wood, the cross-hatching and other surface detail carved in the gesso for the gilding. The quarter-round top of each leg is carved with a husk-filled lambrequin on the front and back faces and with acanthus drops on the sides and corners. Beneath the lambreqins the top part of the shaft is pierced, front to back, the piercing echoing the concave tapered form of the shaft, above a carved drop with a central flower-head. The side faces of the shaft are carved with a volute and laurel drop, parallel to the piercing, and are plain (cross-hatched) below. The bottom of the shaft is carved on all four sides with erect acanthus in high relief, above a shallow blocking – which intersects the stretcher – and the gadrooned quarter-round foot, which ends in a tapered plinth.
Each quarter of the stretchers is of broken S-shaped plan, flat in the outer half and rising in a scroll at the centre where it ends in a volute. The top of each volute is carved with acanthus, and each upright face is carved with a flower-and-bud motif in the middle. The four quarters meet at a central crossing, which is surmounted by a small gadrooned urn finial.
<u>Construction</u>
As far as can be seen the frame is made wholly of beech. From losses of wood and joints just visible in the gilding, it is clear that the legs were pieced out from a core of approximately the same thickness as the blocking at the end of each stretcher. The cross-stretchers, two full-length diagonal members, may be pieced out on the top, though this cannot be seen. They are half-lapped to each other at the crossing and secured by the turned finial which is dowelled through this joint (the dowel protruding underneath). The seat rails are tenoned to the legs. The legs and the feet, formed separately, are all tenoned to the stretchers. It appears that the feet each have a larger tenon than the legs (this was assessed by seeing how far a thin film of melinex could be eased into the horizontal gaps between the leg and stretcher and the foot and stretcher, before it was obstructed by the tenon). So possibly each foot was first tenoned into the stretcher, and the leg then tenoned down into the foot tenon.
One of the short seat rails has a waney edge (with a natural chamfer where it was cut at the curve of the trunk, next to the bark). This rail is more worm-eaten than the rest of the frame, the waney edge being sapwood, which is particularly prone to worm damage.