The Penguin Rocking Chair is a classic representation of that intermediary state between sitting and moving, our personal favorite rocking chair, all done with a visual lightness that looks every bit contemporary today as when it was first revealed in 1953.
Like many things said and done, the rocking chair as we know it is often attributed as an invention of American polymath, Benjamin Franklin. But according to Witold Rybczynski, author of Now Sit Me Down, a comprehensive history of the chair, this is not correct. A bill for a "Nurse Chair with rockers" crafted by Pennsylvania cabinetmaker Solomon Fussell in 1742 was the first formal mention of a rocking chair in writing. Timelines tracking the first mention of rocking chairs also reveal a 6-legged predecessor common to Sweden called the "gungstol" (now readily available today in spirit as IKEA's POÃNG rocker, sans those 6 legs).
The mid-century years are not typically the era most associated with the rocking chair. Yet, lo and behold, there was Ray and Charles Eames in 1950 with their playful fiberglass single-shell RAR armchair, and George Nakashima's single-armed 1960's design. Before that, Hans Wegner's Shaker and Windsor inspired rocking chair had the Danish relaxing all the way back in 1944.
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