ABSTRACT
One of the key problems in the study of material culture is the phenomenon of loss. This chapter discusses the eighteenth-century British domestic footstool, an object that seems to have gone missing in a most suggestive fashion. The only context in which the footstool was used consistently in Britain prior to the nineteenth century was at court, particularly in royal and ecclesiastical ceremonies. Footwarmer was a common domestic accoutrement in the seventeenth century and seems to have seen continued use in the eighteenth. It developed first in the Netherlands, and many Dutch genre paintings show footwarmers in use. A form that should be mentioned in relation to the footstool is the charmingly named 'cricket', a small piece of furniture with a round top and turned legs. Changing attitudes towards sexuality might help to understand the emergence of the footstool. Despite its seeming innocuousness, the footstool served as a display for a revealed, sexualized foot.
