Joint stool

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Joint stools were the most basic and common form of seventeenth-century seating. Samuel Hart’s probate inventory mentions four “Joynt stools.” Due to the extreme rarity of surviving seventeenth-century American joint stools, this English example is used for display on the third floor of the American Wing in the 1680 Samuel Hart Room (gallery 709) from Ipswich, Massachusetts.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art