President John F. Kennedy utilized a custom-designed rocking chair to help his chronic back pain, keeping one of the iconic chairs in nearly every room of the White House. Author Harper Lee plunked her characters down in rocking chairs in To Kill a Mockingbird. Enter any child’s nursery, and you’ll find some form of chair that rocks—glider, rocking armchair, or traditional rocker. And your grandparents or parents likely had a pair of rocking chairs on their porch at some point—a place to sit, converse, read a newspaper, perhaps, and watching the goings-on in the neighborhood. Rocking chairs offer a small nod to a nostalgic brand of Americana—a time before iPhones, laptops, and text messages. When people could truly relax as they gently swayed back and forth with a cocktail, a cold glass of tea, or a cup of coffee. While they play a prominent role in both architecture and pop culture, rocking chairs solidified their place in American history long ago. As much as we at Trex® Outdoor Furniture™ would like to claim we invented the rocking chair, we can’t.
But everyone wants responsibility for the chair’s creation, from the humble farmer to Ben Franklin (he discovered electricity after all; a rocking chair seems simple by comparison). Regardless, rocking chairs originated in the early 18th century in North America. Rocking horses and cradles were already around, and so someone thought it just made good sense to attach skates or rockers to a regular chair’s legs. The term “rocking chair” appeared in the 1787 edition of the Oxford English dictionary. In 1860, a German craftsman named Michael Thonet created the first bentwood rocking chair by steaming pieces of wood to effectively shape the rocking chair’s rocker into its graceful swoop. Since the 18th century, rocking chairs have graced porches, front lawns, patios, decks, and the corners of a nursery or living room. The chair’s popularity took off, and quite a few amalgamations of the chair came about, depending on era, location, and need. The high spindle-backed Windsor rocker originated in mid-1700s England, while the more popular American Windsor features a lower rounded back.
In the 1820s, the Shakers created a no-frills ladder-back chair, the Shaker rocker, with a woven tape seat. In the early 1900s, wicker rockers with padded seats came into fashion, as well as folding rocking chairs, a popular travel accessory. Out of the midcentury movement of the 1950s came the Eames rocker with its curved fiberglass shell seat and thick wooden rockers. At Trex® Outdoor Furniture™, we don’t mess with perfection. We offer the Yacht Club Rocking Chair with its classic design, comfortable straight back, and curved seat. It works perfectly as a pair on your deck or solo on your patio. The thing that sets the Yacht Club Rocking Chair apart? While we didn’t reinvent the wheel with design, with our durable, weather-proof composite material, we created a composite rocker as timeless as the history of the rocking chair. Image Credits: Antique Rockers in header | Shaker Rocking Chair | Folding Rocking Chair | Consider for a moment how chair styles spread in the 18th century, long before telephones, television, industrialization, and mass retailers made trends in furniture widely known overnight.
For a style to take hold, it had to be visible, and for it to be available, craftsmen had to know how to make it. Thomas Chippendale managed to achieve this—and immortality—with the prevailing style of the period named after him, not the reigning monarch. His chairs perfectly demonstrate his mastery of “Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste”—modern being his simplified version of Rococo—was spread via his widely published pattern book, The Director. The book was filled with hundreds of ‘plates’ explaining the style and construction of all of his chairs—some of which held up better on the page than in real life, due to their incredible delicacy. His Chinese-style fretwork chairs are the style that has survived to the greatest degree today. Interpreted into a more faux-bamboo, casual rattan style, the open-work backs were inspired back in Chippendale’s time by the trend that would not die: The Far East. Noting that books published on the subject of travel to China had increased interest in the Eastern style, and the popularity of Horace Walpole’s ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic,’ Chippendale fluidly incorporated both of these styles into his interpretation of Rococo—and the results were adored.
Entire books have been written studying the Chippendale library of design, but it is perhaps these dining chairs that are the most famous, and show the greatest breadth of his work. Chippendale dining chairs immediately dropped the curve of the Queen Anne chair, instead comprising outward-flaring straight uprights and a separate, horizontal yoke top rail. Other key elements of Chippendale style include: Chippendale also made “French-style” upholstered armchairs, or fauteuils, a chair that never went out of style throughout the Georgian period, and was often heavily carved and gilded. Chippendale Style in America (1750-1785) Thomas Chippendale’s book was a chief source of information for American chair-makers. Rather than having to rely on importing chairs to understand the style, The Director gave them unparalleled instruction, and revved up American craftsmanship. American Chippendale chairs have wonderful proportion and lines, often use less carved ornament, and are clearly distinct from English Chippendale chairs.
Regional distinctions showed through as well, as in American Queen Anne chairs, right down to which town or shop created which chair. Still, little is known of southern Chippendale designs, but Charleston was credited with a version that was unique, with gilded accents. Although Chippendale doesn’t make much reference to wood in his book, it’s clear through the intricate carving that mahogany was preferred. Mahogany wasn’t new in America, but its popular use with American Chippendale chairs nudged walnut out of the spotlight. In 1765, Mrs. Benjamin Franklin alluded to this trend, writing that she had moved her “old black walnut chairs” to a lesser-used bedroom. There was also only one instance of a claw-and-ball foot in The Director, but in America, it was a popular motif. Corner chairs, or roundabout chairs, were very popular in the colonies, and began to include some Chippendale elements, as they had included solid splats under the Queen Anne style. Rare, transitional chairs were created in the colonies, including interesting examples of side chairs with Chippendale-style top rails, but Queen Anne-style splats, or, conversely, cabriole legs and a curved back rail, but a splat with a pierced Chippendale design.