In some old images of staked stools and chairs, you’ll find the legs and other components are a bit curved. Sometimes this is the result of the “hedge carpenter” using a curved branch scavenged from the woods. Or from using sections of a log that are riven from the swelling at the butt of the tree, which is naturally curved.
Today I encountered a description of a hedge carpenter that was charming that led me back to Walter Rose’s “The Village Carpenter” (of course).
“Thus they had never become enslaved to line and level; their minds had not been trained to revolt if their work deviated from the square, or if it was slightly on the twist and the faces of their joints not absolutely flush. They themselves made no claim to art – I doubt if they knew the meaning of the word. But the work they did was part of the beauty of the countryside; the cleft fence-rails and posts split from oak saplings, with the bark left on in places, and the rough knots trimmed with axe or drawing knife.”
— Christopher Schwarz