About
Projects
Small Spiky Stools
2024-2025
A pair of little stools made from a leftover board of Beech from Sylva Wood School.
I was first drawn to ‘spikiness’ when designing the roof of a retrofitted office to be like a spiky Christmas Cracker hat. I have since enjoyed the joyful symbolism/simplicity of this form in contradiction to its sharpness which, for me, evokes the fears and conundrums I sometimes feel in a wood workshop.
It’s perhaps not a particularly ‘natural’, ‘forgiving’ or ‘appropriate’ shape to play with when working with wood though it bears much resemblance to the sharp edges and teeth of the saw blades, chisels and axes used to sculpt it. I see these difficult, dysfunctional and uncomfortable domestic objects as kindly friends and thinking pieces.
The triangular offcuts from cutting a spiky stool seat are dowelled to a rectangular piece to generate another spiky shape.
Studio photographs by Joseph Teh.
The plank of Beech I used to make these stools was leftover from the Sylva Wood Centre’s Gender and Woodworking Summer School, where I first prototyped the spiky stool by making a nested trio which celebrated and elevated the offcuts generated from cutting out peculiar ‘Kapow!’ seat shapes. I used Grown in Britain Ash plyboard, Beech, and Sycamore coppice.
Portraits by Phoebe Oldfield.