Stools and pouffes are smaller-scale work than dining chairs but offer far more design choice. The seat can be square, round or oval; the build webbed-and-stuffed or solid foam; the top plain or deep-buttoned; the base turned legs, square posts, castors, or nothing at all. The right choice depends entirely on what the customer wants the stool for. This chapter runs through the variants and covers a typical buttoned drum stool end to end.
The three main types
A square stool is a rectangular seat on four legs — the footstool in front of an armchair, often on castors, with shallow stuffing and usually a plain top. A drum stool is the classic Victorian piano-stool form: a round or oval seat on turned legs, usually deep-buttoned, and the most labour-intensive of the three because of the curved shape and the buttoning. A pouffe is a cuboid or cylindrical block, usually with no legs — the Edwardian footstool, deep-buttoned across every visible face.
“Footstool” usually means a square stool. “Ottoman” could be a pouffe or a square stool with a hinged storage top. “Drum” or “piano stool” means the round form. The words mean different things to different people — always confirm by photo before quoting.
What you need: a typical drum stool
Materials (40 cm drum, deep-buttoned, traditional)
- 3 m of 50 mm jute webbing (paid link)
- 0.4 m² of hessian (paid link)
- 250 g of horsehair (paid link) (or a 50 mm foam slab — see the foam tool)
- 0.4 m² of scrim (paid link)
- 0.4 m² of cotton felt or Dacron (paid link)
- 0.4 m² of calico (paid link)
- 0.6 m of show fabric — allow 30% extra for buttoning
- 7 cloth-covered buttons, 12 mm (paid link)
- Mattress twine for buttoning (paid link)
- 2 m of gimp braid (paid link)
- Bottoming cloth (paid link)
Total: £40–90 depending on fabric. Time 5–6 hours, of which about 90 minutes is the buttoning. Work the yardage with the fabric calculator.
Tools for the job
- Magnetic tack hammer (paid link)
- Webbing strainer (stretcher) (paid link)
- Double-ended buttoning needle (paid link)
- Regulator (paid link)
The full kit is covered in the toolkit. Links above are affiliate links — they cost you nothing extra and help keep the site free.
Stage 1 Strip & inspect
Remove the existing upholstery, save the show fabric as a template, and inspect the frame. Drum-stool frames are usually three or four turned legs joined by a circular wooden ring at the seat — the “rim.” Check the joints between legs and rim: a wobbly drum stool nearly always has loose joints, so see frame repair before you go on.
Stage 2 Web the rim
Three strands across, three the other way, interlaced — the same layout as a drop-in, tacked to the top edge of the wooden rim. The stool is small enough that tension can be a touch lower than a chair seat; it carries sitter loads, not spring loads. (Full method in webbing.)
Stage 3 Stuff & stitch the edge
Hessian over the webbing, then horsehair, then a small stitched edge around the rim (see stuffing & stitched edges). That stitched edge gives the drum its characteristic flat-domed top — about 60 mm of stuffing at the centre, tapering to nearly flat at the rim.
Stage 4 Calico, wadding & top fabric
Calico, wadding and cover go on as for any chair seat (see calico, wadding & top cover), but the round shape needs careful easing — you’ll gather the cover into small pleats around the whole circumference rather than just at corners.
A round shape needs many more pleats than a rectangle, because the cover gathers around the entire edge. Plan for 12–16 small pleats on a 40 cm drum, and chalk them on the calico before fitting the show fabric.
Stage 5 Button the top
The drum-stool standard is a six-around-one hexagonal pattern: one centre button and six around it. Mark the positions before fitting the cover, make backing-patch holes through the calico, and pull each button down to about 25 mm dimple depth (full method in buttoning & tufting). Reckon 90 minutes as a beginner, 30 once you have it.
The deep-buttoning calculator sets out the button spacing and — crucially — the extra fabric each dimple takes up, so you cut the cover full enough.
Stage 6 Trim & bottom
Gimp around the top rim where the show fabric meets the show-wood (see trimming & finishing), a bottoming cloth across the whole underside, then sign and date it. Done.
The pouffe variant: deep-buttoned all round
An Edwardian pouffe is the most decorative item in this chapter — a typical one is a 50 cm cube with the top, all four sides, and sometimes the bottom edge deep-buttoned in a matching pattern. The button count is often 30 or more, and total labour around 12 hours; we quote £500–700 for a fully restored Edwardian pouffe excluding fabric.
Internally it’s webbed-and-stuffed with horsehair throughout, over an internal hardwood frame that carries the buttoning forces — usually a simple 25 mm beech cuboid with glued mitred corners, with the buttoning twine passing through the whole stuffing and anchored against the frame. Modern pouffes are foam blocks with a fitted cover — much faster and cheaper, but they won’t last fifty years. We make them when asked, and always explain the difference.
An “ottoman” with a hinged storage top is a different beast: square-stool construction, but the seat lifts on hinges over a storage box. The upholstered lid is built as a separate piece — almost exactly like a drop-in seat — and screwed to the hinges. Quote the box and the lid separately.
From the workshop
The Edwardian pouffe restoration
A regular customer brought us her grandmother’s Edwardian pouffe in 2017 — a 50 cm cube, 28 buttons across five faces, original 1905 horsehair still in good condition. The cover was rotting velvet the cat had spent decades sharpening claws on; everything else was salvageable.
We rebuilt on the original horsehair (good for another fifty years), made a new internal frame because the old one had a split corner, and re-buttoned in green wool moquette to match her other pieces. Fourteen hours over a fortnight; £550 plus £140 for the fabric. The pouffe will outlast its new owner — her daughter has already said she wants it.
Did you know
Where the pouffe came from
The word entered English in the 1880s from the French pouffe, an upholstered cushion seat. The form is older — Middle Eastern textiles and seating influenced English furniture from the late 18th century through the East India trade. The Edwardian British pouffe married that floor-cushion form to British deep-buttoning (Chesterfield technique on a small cuboid) to produce something culturally hybrid that everyone treated as their own. By 1910 it was near-universal in British drawing rooms; by 1940 the lighter modern footstool had largely replaced it. Restored originals are now collectible.
Common mistakes
Stool errors that catch beginners out
- The wrong button count — six-around-one is standard; eight looks crowded, four sparse. Stick to the convention.
- Too little cover for a round top — a circle needs more easing than a rectangle. Allow at least 30% more fabric.
- Loose castor sockets — often need re-gluing or replacing before re-upholstery. Check at the strip and quote any carpentry separately.
- Skipping the pouffe’s internal frame — a buttoned pouffe without one loses its shape within a year. Budget for it.
- The wrong type for the use — a drum is too small for storage, a pouffe too low for real sitting. Match the type to the use, or suggest the right thing.
Stools and pouffes covered, three variants understood. The next project is the simplest upholstered piece in the bedroom — the headboard — and the place where modern foam construction is most often the right answer rather than traditional stuffing.