Classic Americana Traditional Chair Remains A National Favorite

The image of a mother seated in a rocking chair, lulling her baby to sleep with a comforting to-and-fro motion, exudes warmth. A rocker beside a blazing fire or welcoming visitors to a front porch is classic Americana. Among the most democratized pieces of furniture, rockers have been welcome everywhere from the humblest homes to the White House.

John F. Kennedy made his rocker famous when he installed it in the Oval Office to ease his ailing back. Jimmy Carter brought five of his Jumbos (a rocker style designed by Thomas Brumby in 1875) to Washington. Abraham Lincoln enjoyed his until the day of his assassination on April 14, 1865. He was sitting in his upholstered rocker at Ford’s Theater when John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal bullet.

“For more than two centuries Americans from all walks of life have been rocking, dozing, dreaming, reading, nursing, spinning tales and orating from rocking chairs,” writes Bernice Steinbaum in her book “The Rocker: An American Design Tradition” (Rizzoli).

The rocker has assumed the status of American icon. Its old-fashioned, homespun image conjures up in many the feelings of family. Steinbaum believes its symbolism is even more profound.

“Rocking chairs are for dreams and dreamers,” she said recently. “They’re the place we most associate with life and death, from the cradling of the baby to the rocking in our sunset years. Yet we can enjoy rocking chairs at all ages. The rocker is the most likely piece of furniture to pass down. We all want a piece of yesterday so we can have some tomorrow.”

Psychology and nostalgia aside, there appear to be some physiological therapeutic benefits to rocking as well.

“Any time you recline, the muscles of the back work a lot less hard than when you’re sitting up straight,” said Christen Grant, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan Center for Ergonomics in Ann Arbor. “When you recline, you’re more balanced. Also, you put less weight and pressure on your discs than when you sit up straight.”

Surely the creators of the rocker were not aware of just how good the chair may have been for the body. Just who conceived the idea of a rocking chair is unknown. Benjamin Franklin often is credited with inventing the rocker, but its origins more likely are European.

“The rocker probably was adapted from a baby’s cradle,” Steinbaum said. The first designs, sometime in the 18th century, were crude. Clumsy skates, or rockers, were simply tacked to the chair legs.

Historic examples of rockers made in New England are similar.

But Steinbaum says it really doesn’t matter that we can’t claim the rocker’s invention.

“Americans have adopted the rocker as we have patchwork quilts and pizza pie,” Steinbaum says.

Indeed, even one of the most classic images, one that many American furniture companies still manufacture, is the bentwood rocker.

Designed in 1860 by Michael Thonet, a German cabinetmaker living in Vienna, the rocker’s form was innovative, crafted from steamshaped wood, which allowed arms to arc from the oval rattan back and join another deeply curved frame that continues seamlessly into the bottom skate. Further distinguishing the sides was a decorative scroll, which gives the piece elegance.

The Bentwood Model 2825, manufactured by Thonet Industries, measures 43 inches high by 23 inches wide by 40 inches deep, with a 17-inch-square seat.

Depending on the finish, the rocker today can be at home in casual or formal surroundings. An all-black bentwood rocker in stark white contemporary architecture punctuates the furniture’s sculptural features.

You may be lucky enough to own a rocker that has been in your family for generations. If you don’t, try antiques stores and flea markets for vintage examples.

But you might find more options, and shopping will be easier, if you buy a new one. There are many styles from which to choose, from Victorian to Appalachian, from Western to Windsor, in a price suited to your pocketbook.

When shopping for a rocker, pay attention to all of its measurements. Overall dimensions of height, width, length of skate and depth will tell you how much space the chair will take up in a room. But height from floor to seat and seat size (width and depth) will tell you how comfortable the chair will be for your body.

With the resurgence in popularity of the arts and crafts movement, manufacturers such as Stickley have included rockers in their lines. At the High Point, N.C., furniture market in April, the company brought back a Mission design attributed to Englishman William Morris.

Crafted of quartersawn white oak or solid wild black cherry, the chair has a loose pillow back. Its broad side slats are typical of the decidedly masculine Mission styling. It sells for $1,300 to $1,500, depending on finish and materials.

Some contemporary craftsmen also have embraced the design of rocking chairs in their furniture lines. Sam Maloof, a highly regarded Crafts revivalist since the ‘50s, won an award for his double fiddleback rocker. Thomas Moser, a former college professor who began creating one-of-a-kind furniture with nods to Shaker, Queen Anne and Pennsylvania Dutch antiques, has been sought out by people from coast to coast for his beautiful sculptural rocking chairs. One is named for the small Maine town where the cabinetmaker began. Moser’s New Gloucester rocker, crafted from ash, with cherry for strength, sells for $1,250.

The names of most rocking chairs relate to the materials used, the maker, the style, the times in which they were popular or even the people who used them.

The chair made famous by JFK, which is sold in L.L. Bean catalogs today, appears to be a cousin of the rocker called the Brumby, named for its maker. According to the ad copy, the chair “has steambent back posts set at the correct angle for true back support and good posture.”

The steambent oak posts are straight, and the front legs have minimal turns. A hand-woven rattan seat and back offer firmness and natural “springs.”

Wide arm rests are set low to accommodate handwork or reading. JFK had his padded with back and seat cushions.

The L.L. Bean rocker sells for $225.

Classic designs remain popular. There are interpretations of the Windsor rocker, adapted from the English chair that dates to the 17th century. Some of these can be fancy, painted with floral motifs, stenciled or sponged, as were the originals.

The simplicity of Shaker rockers has captured a 20th-century audience because they bridge modern and vintage architecture, country and urban interiors. The spare and familiar silhouette, with slatbacks, rounded finials and rush or woven seats, has been interpreted by several manufacturers.

Ethan Allen included a Shakerinspired chair in its American Impressions collection and showed it in a striking black frame as part of a bedroom setting, a companion to cherry furnishings with black satin trim. The chair lists for $499.

The Victorian fondness for wicker chairs, settees, tables and planters led to the design of rocking chairs in that medium. Many examples at the turn of the century were quite elaborate, detailed with curlicues and cuts. Today, more unadorned designs are being reproduced to reflect modern tastes.

An Ethan Allen wicker rocker with floral seat cushion and pillow is particularly at home in a cottagey setting, with paneled walls warmed by collections of plates, garden flowers in a vase and family photos on a pine table. It sells for $839.

Rockers, of course, are by no means restricted to the indoors. Rustic country styles for front porches and outdoor decks include Adirondack, chunky poles and delicate twig styles naturally finished or painted.

Curiously, a rustic twig rocker, like one made around 1915 in West Virginia, which now is part of a collection at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, suits a contemporary setting quite well. A snappy tallbacked twig rocker with the original red paint, set in a lofty architectural gallery space lined with windows, proves the point.

Such twig rockers still are being made. At least four styles of handmade hickory rockers are produced for the Amish Country collection in New Castle, Pa.

The average price is $300, and the chairs are available naturally finished or painted in a choice of colors, even red.

“It’s the hand-crafted nature of these rockers that softens the slickness of modern decor,” said Deanna Wish, owner of the Amish Country Collection.

Barbara Goodman and her husband, Eric, sell hand-crafted teak or Honduras mahogany furniture suitable for outdoor use through their mail-order catalog, Wood Classics. They long have harbored a love affair with the rocker.

“We own several,” said Goodman, “including one in the kitchen. Rockers speak to our emotions.

“They evoke images of tranquillity and warmth. In our house, it never fails. People go straight to the rocker.”

And in the Goodman family, rockers long have put children to sleep. Goodman’s daughter and granddaughter were photographed in their Classic rocker. It sells for $380 in mahogany, $440 in teak. In kit form the mahogany rocker is $280, $340 in teak.

The mahogany and teak are durable and maintenance-free. They will weather to a silvery gray when exposed to sunlight. The wood also may be color-stained so the grain shows through. If indoor use is intended, the wood should be finished for protection against stains or natural oils from your skin.

Kits include all parts that have been cut, shaped, sanded and rounded over with peg holes countersunk. All you do is assemble with a hammer and Phillips screwdriver.

Many styles of rockers are available, but clearly the design cannot be adapted to some periods. Think of how odd, for example, a gilded Louis XV frame might appear with skates. That’s not to say that artisans haven’t “dressed” their rockers with painted floral embellishments or even gilding.

The invention of the platform rocker in the 1870s encouraged fancier rocker design. George Hunzinger developed a spring-andhinge mechanism (patented in 1882) that allowed the skates to be anchored to a base.

The stationary base allowed the chair to rock noiselessly without “walking” along the floor and opened the door to even more ornamental design, with decorative fabric covers for seat and back and fine wood frames in styles that included Eastlake Victorian.

Even modernists have tinkered with the design.

In the ‘50s Charles Eames created a rocker out of molded polyester with an all-in-one rounded mesh seat. It was manufactured by Herman Miller Inc.

Israeli artist Ilana Goor designed a stunning rocker that in 1988 earned her a Roscoe award, the equivalent of an Oscar in the furniture industry. Inspired by a child’s sled, the profile of the molded steel frame with leather seat is reminiscent of Thonet’s bentwood.

Then there have been playful designs, such as one by Trent Hickman titled Let’s Rock, a visual pun with a rocker resting on legs made of red guitars.

For his chair, Mitch Ryerson assembled washboards (for backs) and skates attached to giant clothespin legs. Clothespins also form the slats between arms and sides made of detergent box logos.

Steinbaum included some of these exotic images in her book and in an exhibit she hosted in her Soho art gallery in 1989.

Jeweler and product designer David Tisdale was invited to participate in that exhibit. He never had designed a stick of furniture, let alone a rocker.

But he drew from his own reminiscences and teamed those with familiar working materials: stainless steel, anodized aluminum (derived from a process that changes the color), and stained wood.

He says most of the design was based on trial and error rather than precise engineering.

“I found a sheet metal manufacturer to bend a piece of metal,” he says.

The boxlike rocker is silvery aluminum, decorated with some anodized aluminum triangles in magenta and teal blue. Inside the base are a magenta stained maple panel bisected by a teal stained triangle. The one-of-a-kind rocker is not for sale.

Tisdale’s rocker hardly looks cozy, but he claims “it’s much more comfortable than people might think.”

Tisdale believes it’s the interactive nature of rocking chairs that keeps them popular.

“There’s a response you have with the rocker,” he said. “There’s an energy that comes out of it.

“You have to keep using your muscles to push it. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like rocking chairs.”

MEMO: These sidebars appeared with the story: The rocker should fit the rockee Some early rockers sit so low to the ground, you can’t get up gracefully without feeling as if you have to be pried out. There are no rules for designing a rocking chair, and there’s little advice about how to select one. Suffice it to say, a rocker needs to suit the person who sits in it. “The chair needs to fit your body,” said Walter Kleeman, an ergonomics consultant, interior designer and author based in High Point, N.C. “You accomplish this with an adjustable back or with the size of the chair. “To fit 99 percent of Americans you must have a seat width of at least 21 inches between the arms. With the depth, you get into some problems because of the weight of the thigh and length of the leg, which vary so much from person to person. If you make the rocker seat too deep, a lot of people have to sit toward the front of the chair, or their legs will be sticking up.” “A deep seat puts pressure on the back of the legs,” said Christen Grant of the Center for Ergonomics at the University of Michigan. “Smaller people can’t reach the back of the chair and their feet won’t touch the floor. It’s important to scooch all the way back and not be pressed against the front end of the seat.” Pitch also is important. “If the seat is too flat or horizontal, when you’re leaning back, you’ll tend to slide out, especially when you sit forward,” said Grant. “That’s uncomfortable. And it’s tiring to make your feet work too much. “The way a seat tilts back to prevent sliding is called sheer. Where the seat and back come together should be more than 90 degrees - 100, 120 or even 135 - for the health of the lower back. It has to do with the shape of all the vertebrae in the back. When you stand, the back is in a curve, pressure on the discs evenly distributed. When you sit in a 90-degree position, your lower back gets flat. As it flattens, it smooshes the front part of the disc. “With a good rocking chair, you rock not just by pushing with your feet, but by shifting your center of gravity.” So selection of a rocker is as subjective as choosing a bed pillow or mattress. It depends on your size, the way you sit, and your weight distribution. You have to try it out. “Some people like their backs prone,” said Bernice Steinbaum, author of “The Rocker: An American Design Tradition.” “I like to sit straight up. Some like bars in the back, whether they are flexible or not. Some like the sense of wood touching their backs, others like their backs upholstered.” Universal Press Syndicate

Where to go for more information Amish Country Collection, R.D. 5, Sunset Valley Road, New Castle, Pa. 16105; (412) 458-4811 Ethan Allen Inc., Ethan Allenz Drive, Danbury, Conn. 06811; (203) 743-8000 L.L. Bean Inc., Casco Street, Freeport, Maine 04033-0001; (800) 221-4221 Ilana Goor, 979 Third Ave., Suite 240, New York, N.Y. 10022; (212) 421-9114 Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, 72 Wright’s Landing, P.O. Box 1237, Auburn, Maine 04211-1237; (800) 862-1973 Stickley Furniture, One Stickley Drive, Manlius, N.Y. 13114; (315) 682-5500 David Tisdale Inc., 16 Waverly Place, New York, N.Y. 10003; (212) 228-7363 Thonet Industries, a division of Shelby Williams Industries Inc., 1348 Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Ill. 60654; (800) 551-6702 Wood Classics Inc., Osprety Lane, Gardiner, N.Y. 12525; (914) 255-7871. Send $2 for a catalog.