Origin of the word "easel"
 

Dutch artists used the word "ezel" to describe the wooden frame they used to hold a canvas while they were working on it. The term literally means "DONKEY," the allusion being to a beast of burden carrying a load.

The word was used in the same way that the English later used "horse" to denote 'a supportive wooden frame,' i.e., in the compound "clothes-horse."

The word EASEL was borrowed into English in the first half of the seventeenth century.