Antique and Vintage Rocking Chairs

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It’s hard to find a piece of furniture with more American associations than the rocking chair. Benjamin Franklin toyed with the design by attaching a foot pedal to his—it was connected to an overhead fan, which he used to keep himself cool....
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It’s hard to find a piece of furniture with more American associations than the rocking chair. Benjamin Franklin toyed with the design by attaching a foot pedal to his—it was connected to an overhead fan, which he used to keep himself cool. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a rocking chair while John F. Kennedy had his official portrait taken in one after his doctor recommended it for his troubled back. In fact, rockers were around in late-17th-century England, but they proliferated in the American colonies during the early 18th century. Whatever their true origins, rockers was certainly popular in the United States by the early 1800s, when several British travelers’ accounts described—sometimes with disdain—the chair that could be “found wherever Americans sit down,” as Frances Anne Butler put it in 1835. In 1844, a British commentator in a Vermont newspaper described the furniture as “of exclusive American contrivance and use,” and extolled the “comfort and luxurious ease of these wooden narcotics.” Some of the earliest rocking chairs were formed from regular chairs with wooden rockers added to their legs. These prototypical rockers were perhaps inspired by cradles, which had existed for centuries. In fact, some of the oldest known rocking chairs were sized for toddlers. Some early examples of these served a dual purpose of potty training: a hole for that use was cut in the middle of the seat, which was then covered by a cushion for the chair’s more conventional application. The first adult rocking chairs were likely used to rock children to sleep by nurses or mothers. In 19th-century art and early photographs, rocking chairs were associated with women, and few men were shown sitting in them except the very young, very old, and invalids. The earliest rocking chairs often had thick, tall rockers that extended equidistantly behind and in front of the chair legs. As the 18th century progressed, the rockers tended to extend further behind the chair...
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