What is a duet stool?

A wide piano stool, usually made to seat two players. Duet appears in a hundred titles on Sellingantiques, with 'duet piano' in another thirty-nine. Most carry a hinged lid over a shallow compartment for sheet music. Some are described as adjustable as well, with a screw mechanism raising the seat.

How old are mahogany stools usually?

The dealers' own dating runs from 1750 to 1930, and four hundred of the listings carry a clean year rather than a period word. Where periods are used instead, '19th Century' is the largest single label, followed by Victorian, Edwardian, Regency and Georgian. Decade labels cluster late, around the 1880s through the 1910s. '18th Century' covers a much smaller slice than the 19th.

Which type turns up most often?

The piano and music stool. 'Piano' is in nearly a quarter of all titles, which makes it the defining form of the whole category. After that come plain upholstered stools, footstools and window seats, then dressing-table stools as a smaller branch.

Are these stools by known makers?

Rarely. Gillows is the only name reaching five dealers, and several of those titles hedge it as 'in the style of Gillow' or 'in the manner of Gillows of Lancaster'. The great bulk of mahogany stools are listed without any maker at all.

What does a metamorphic stool do?

It converts to something else. In this category that usually means a stool that opens out into library steps, or a low stool that adjusts into a gout rest. They appear only a handful of times, and they sit at the very top of the range.

Do unusual forms ever appear?

They do, as one-offs. A bidet stool, a close stool, a grotto stool, a carriage stool, a clerk's stool and a papier-mâché harpist's music stool have all passed through. Against a body of stock that is overwhelmingly English, single Swedish, Canadian, Biedermeier and French Empire pieces are the exception.

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Antique Mahogany Stools

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Small mahogany-framed seat furniture, most of it upholstered: piano and duet stools, dressing stools, footstools and gout rests, X-frame and cabriole-leg stools, and long window seats made for a recess.