Organ Stool (Adapted for Use) with Daniel Pateman (2025)
Organ Stool (Adapted for Use) is a collaboration between Sarah Hughes and the furniture maker, Daniel Pateman. It takes as its starting point an organ stool from the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lullington, which has been adapted to tilt the seat toward the keyboard.
Hughes and Pateman further adapt the stool’s design to reflect the perceived musicality of the landscape. As the tilting stool mirrors a musical caesura (a notated silence where time is not counted) so the sweeping curves of the Sussex combes take on the flowing quality of a legato. Taken together, these associations and allusions trace the steps of a long walk across chalk downland: the ascent and descent of undulating hills articulated with rests.
The stool is made from locally sourced yew wood sourced from the West Dean Estate.