wooden stool | 1694

1651:1341:1

Donor: Almond Bailey

From the 17th century up until the early 19th century, low footstools like this were called “crickets.” At a time when furniture was expensive and living spaces were cramped, small crickets such as this one, which is no more than 12” tall, offered a place for a child to sit or a grandmother to rest her feet. 

Chair-makers generally made stools, and their styles followed the styles of chairs made during those times, including Windsor styles and straight-legged stools resembling the bottoms of slate-back chairs. Stools became a part of everyday life and were painted into portraits of ladies and children as part of the finer furnishings of a home. Tall stools were made to accompany a desk or writing stand, however, they also appear in tavern scenes showing that stools made up the furniture of places of business.

A nineteenth-century note pasted onto the stool in our collection reads: “This cricket was once used by Capt John Bacon’s Great Grandmother of So Natick Mass. Made in 1694.” 

This footstool must have been painted red at one point, as traces of red paint can be seen on the top and legs.