Hi,I'm more of a traditionalist, so when I look at this I see more dragon than horse. But it is definitely a cool way to carve. You could use same technique to make small ink blocks/stamps.
That is a pretty cool stepstool. Looks like it was meant to be kept in one particular place and not moved around. As DremelJohn said, if solid wood, I'd simply sand it down (or use steel wool) and restain it. You wouldn't want anything slippery on ...
