4 legs good

Carol O’Callaghan looks at stools — those indispensable objects that fulfil any number of uses in the home.

Way back in 1933 a clever Finn by the name of Alvar Aalto designed a stool, a three-legged morsel of practicality with a pared-back aesthetic that matched its simple name of Stool 60.

In 2012 it’s every bit at home in our environment as it was nearly 80 years ago, and that is the essence of this poor relation of the furniture family: The stool has never been truly in or out of fashion but always there in the background when needed.