Hand-Carved Monkey Pod Wood Twisty Stool 23″

Our elegant twisting wood stools are a beautiful multipurpose addition to any room in your home. Whether as a stool or side table, standing together or alone, their presence is naturally chic. Each graceful twist and turn has been hand carved by artisans in Thailand from sustainable Monkey Pod wood. Amazingly, each stool begins as a single solid piece of wood cut directly from a Monkey Tree branch. The solid pieces are cut to rough shape before being meticulously hand-carved and finished to produce this stunning final product. Due to their handmade quality, no two stools will be exactly alike and may vary slightly from the product image shown. Touch up the natural finish with lemon oil to maintain its luster and shine.

The process used in creating our twisted wooden stools is quite awe inspiring to behold. When we first discovered these beauties in Thailand, we had the pleasure of witnessing it first hand. With multiple members of a village involved in the process, it takes a legacy of carving skills passed through generations to create each stool.

Each begins from a large segment cut from the branch of a Monkey Pod Tree. The segments are rough-cut with a saw to remove the bark and to create the general more rectangular shape of the stool. This single solid block of wood is then passed to an artisan who is highly skilled in carving. With just a set of chisels, we watched as one man sat cross-legged on the ground chipping and carving the wood. Slow and precise, his steady hands sculpted near-perfect symmetry as he hollowed the stool’s center and carved the graceful twist into its sides.

Once he was finished, another artisan took the stool into a small studio to sand and chisel away any remaining ridges and hard marks left on the wood from the carving artisan before him. He evened the entire surface to a smooth finish and passed the stool to the final artisan or artisans. Grandmothers in the village give the stools their final touch by applying wax finish by hand.