“Error” Stool

2019. In response to the design prompt “Error,” a copy, made entirely from scrap wood, of an odd little antique stool with a lot of personality

My family has a really old Chinese joinery stool that is full of beautiful errors and imperfections. In responding to the prompt, my first instinct was to try to copy this stool. And then I remembered something I once heard at a talk by Vic Tesolin, who wrote The Minimalist Woodworker. He said, “Don’t waste wood – you think it grows on trees?!” That made me think that wasting things is a form of error.

So I built my stool entirely from a pile of scrap wood – waste wood from my past projects, and the remains of an old table inherited from my grandfather. But a joinery stool is supposed to fit together and stay together perfectly – without glue. In fact, if you try to glue it, the glue ruins the surfaces. So I had to make all these bits of waste wood speak to each other perfectly. Where I made cuts, “perfect” new wood is revealed under the “errors” of the surface.

Dancing Stool (“Error” Stool 2)

2019. A wooden stool developed by cultivating an error in the making process and transforming it into style.

The assignment included developing two responses to the “Error” prompt. I thought that I if I jumped into “error” – by making something without measuring, out of dimensional lumber, working as quickly as possible – I might latch onto some idea through the making process.

The rough stool I made this way is not attractive. But as I looked it over, one thing stood out: the animal-like gesture of that leg. My error allowed me to see its charm, an aliveness that I would not have arrived at otherwise. Fred Astaire used to say that if you make enough mistakes, eventually people consider it to be your style. So I followed my initial error until it led me to The Dancing Stool.