Snake high stool, Seletti Wears Toiletpaper, Ä846, amara.com.

Tall stools have a wonderful vertical lift, and staged by counters, bars, and work-benches, they are multi-purpose jesters. Here’s my choice of six of the best, with some lofty design style chops, all of which can be found second-hand, or used as inspiration for similar seating available at a fraction of the price on the high street.

With the intertwining lines of design gods Arne Jacobsen, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames, the Master’s Chair (from €395, kartell.com) was created for Kartell by Philippe Starck and Eugeni Quitllet in 2010. With its whiplash chic available to enjoy from every angle, the only thing that could make its airy sketch any better are longer legs to raise it into our eyeline. The embrace of three silhouettes in this fabulous backed stool, makes it supportive, comfortable and in a giving plastic, it yields ever so slightly to the back, and can safely be left outside for the summer.

In a thermoplastic polymer, The Master’s Chair is made entirely in recycled materials and is available in black, white, rust, grey, green, gold, chrome and titanium. Despite its stately name, it is highly stable and stacks up to four high, ideal for a small patio doing cocktail duty at the weekends. As with all plastics, don’t scrub the surface of your Master with any gritty cleaner.

Less is definitely more, with the gentle industrial presence of the Cornet (€252, finnishdesignshop.com), by Jonas Trampedach, for the label, HAY. Channelling the simplicity of a city bicycle rack and your secondary school chemistry lab, the piece combines tubular metal legs and foot rests with a planed wood seat in smoked, oiled oak. What makes it slightly interesting is the asymmetrical placement of the horizontal struts. It would be a good choice if you want your stool to be just that little less present, and can perform as a lamp table.

Trampedach, a graduate of the legendary Danmarks Design Skole, did his Master’s degree in London’s Royal College of Art and now works from his studio in Copenhagen. If you like his pieces, he is one of a number of young designers also familiar for their work at Ikea so watch for his byline at the Swedish-style hangar, and seek out regular second-hand pieces online. Budget cheat? Faux Brown Leather Stool by Jensen (€110, ezlivingfurniture.ie).

I’m drawn to the open book-style fabric and leather seat of the Georg Bar Stool 67 ( €519) by designer Christina Liljenberg Halstrom for the Danish furniture label, Skagerak. The brand is best known for its outdoor seating, beloved for summer homes across Scandinavia. The base is simplicity incarnate in unfinished oak poles with a metal H-frame foot support, a mix of Nordic sensuality and Japanese minimalism. If you’re drawn to this piece, take a look at the Georg bench which also includes that leather-tied seat. At €945, not the place for dirty shorts and rugby boots.

Halstrom is another millennial designer and she has a special interest in Asian architecture, plain to see in her visionary stools, benches and consoles.

If you buy any Skagerak pieces with unsealed wood, pick up a can of their Cura oil (€19, skagerak.comtarget="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">) to saturate, darken and protect the timbers from settling dirt. For a similar dished Japanese seat, try the Hatton Bar Stool in grey, just €150 in solid wood at cultfurniture.com.

An indoor dandy, Seletti-Wears-Toiletpaper offers a range of velvet seated, gilt footed barstools that wouldn’t look out of place in any WAGs champagne swill-spot. Deliberately outrageous, this brand is a collaboration between Seletti and Maurizio Cattelan & Pierpaolo Ferrari’s magazine, Toiletpaper, where the silly collides head-on with the surreal and luxurious. Snakes (€863, amara.com), with its black background and undulating adders, is the most outrageous of its prints, and is married to a deeply upholstered seat with kickout slender black legs with black accents, recalling 1920s nigh-club lacquerwork. I cannot afford it, I have nowhere to put it, but, boys, I have to shout: “Bellissima!” . You could sneak it onto the wedding gift list and run.

Staying in fat velvet and well away from the slop of Cornflakes in the kitchen, there’s the much more affordable, and better behaved, Ivonne stool with its shiny, gold tubular legs and richly upholstered turquoise velvet, an utter bargain at €147 if you can’t resist some Gatsby bling, kavehome.comtarget="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">. Argos offers pairs of its velvet lovely Etta at just €270 a pair, argos.ie.

Height-adjustable screw-top stools were popular with artisan craftsmen and factory workers from the late 1800s, where tasking and shift work demanded versatility. The Tom Bar Stool (70-86cm), designed by Konstantin Grcic for the Italian manufacturer Magis, is one of the very best modern twists, and is over a decade old this year. It offers a fairly traditional three-legged timber tripod support (note the Nordic Swan Eco label), with a richly coloured vice for working the seat up and down. It can be used as a bar-stool for drinks or a breakfast bar, or stand duty in a dressing-room where it’s a popular choice both as a clothes valet and a perch; from €533, finnishdesignshop.com.

As with any stool, we are careful with high backless stools, as children can and do lose their balance. If you like this stool, it goes well with the sheet metal tables (Diana C) of Konstantin Grcic in his Diana C/Classicon collection for a home office or commercial space. Bargain turn? The Halfred at Ikea, just €55, ikea.ie.

Created by the first designer to cantilever wood, Alvar Aalto, The Artek 64 Bar Chair (€385.70, ambientedirect.com) is a quiet little piece of interior design royalty still beloved of architects and interior designers. The brand was founded in 1935 by Artek and was founded in 1935 by four young idealists — Alvar and Aino Aalto, Nils-Gustav Hahl and Maire Gullichsen in Finland and their designs have endured and thrived. Choose the K65 if you want a similar Aalto chair (€487) with a back on it.

Smaller stools start at €265 from a range of Artek suppliers in Ireland. For another chair that’s barely there, at a great price, by a great design house, Iskos-Berlin, the Soft Edge by Hay in moulded plywood has (as its name suggests) a nice smooth edge for bare thighs in a simple four-legged stool with or without a back. My choice would be without the back (€220, from various suppliers).

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