A “creepie” is an Irish or Scottish term referring to a rustic three-legged stool that I first stumbled upon in Chris Schwartz’s Anarchist Design Book. I’m not well studied enough to say what, if anything, makes a creepie particularly unique but I find the term quite endearing. Most of the limited examples that I’ve seen have a large solid seat with through tenons and no stretchers, similar to many stick chairs from the same region. Since my plan is to build an Irish Stick Chair, I thought that a creepie would be a good first step along that journey and a perfect gift for my dad.
In the Anarchist Design Book, Chris Schwartz comments on how difficult it is to capture the charm of these old vernacular stools. After a couple of attempts, I have to agree. Part of that charm is age, which will come with time, but I think the aspect that’s the most difficult to replicate is the raw utility of the piece. There’s a certain “vibe” that comes from construction of necessity. On the piece that I took my inspiration from below, whoever built it didn’t bother to trim the tenons flush to the seat. That’s not a feature I plan on emulating but it does add to the utilitarian look.
My first attempt wasn’t really what I was going for. I don’t think the parts have enough heft and I don’t love the full round over on the seat. If something else looks a little off then you have very good eyes and you’d be right. I made a mistake when drilling the mortises for the legs.
I mistook one of the ambrosia holes for the mark that I made for the mortise. Whoops.
On my second attempt I set out to correct my perceived shortcomings and also had another source of inspiration. I showed my uncle the stool and he commented on how low to the ground it was. I responded that it wasn’t that different from a five gallon bucket and that my dad sits on those all the time. That set off a lightbulb in my head and, in addition to using heftier parts, I modeled the dimensions of the second stool off of a five gallon bucket.
That’s definitely closer to what I was looking for. The top is a full 2″ thick and the legs taper from 1 3/4″ to the 1 1/4″ mortise. This is compared to a 1 1/2″ thick top and legs tapering from 1 1/2″ to 1″. I think the additional heft looks better and the prefer the rounded edges. Thankfully, my wife prefers the first stool so everyone is happy.
A few other items of note before wrapping up:
- The taper for the legs starts about 3″ up the leg and should be slightly curved towards the mortise. It’s a subtle detail but adds more life to the leg.
- The resultant angle was 15 degrees and the sightline, obviously, runs through the center of the seat. This is overcomplicating things but I think it’s useful to think in these terms.
- For the first stool I drilled the mortises from the bottom and on the second stool I drilled from the top. I found that the entry hole wasn’t as clean as the exit hole and will probably drill non-tapered mortises exclusively from the bottom in the future.
- I tried to sand these as little as possible and use edge tools to produce the final finished surfaces, including the turnings. I am far from perfect so there are still visible tool marks but I think that in this case they add more than they subtract.
- The finish is a coat of General Finishes Seal-A-Cell, followed by a few coats of satin Arm-R-Seal. This is pretty much my go to for a generic piece of furniture.
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