Stool (Tabouret)

European Art Deco designs borrowed heavily from other cultures, both past and present. Designers from countries that had extensive colonial holdings in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific frequently appropriated forms and incorporated materials taken from these distant cultures.

The French Art Deco designer Pierre Legrain looked to traditional Asante, or Ashanti, stools for the form of this stool, modifying the African example by employing lavish materials including lacquered wood and sharkskin. The Asante are a people native to the Asante region of present-day Ghana, for whom stools have long been powerful symbols of authority, unity, and lineage. It’s unclear to what extent Legrain was aware of the Asante stool’s cultural significance. Although his design offers an example of masterful craftsmanship and inventive reinterpretation, it also poses problematic questions about cultural appropriation in the context of French imperialism, which justified exploitation of a sophisticated and established culture.