Rocking Chair

Rocking Chairs It’s hard to find a more American piece of furniture 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, all evidence indicates that the rocking chair was invented in the American colonies by the early eighteenth century. It was certainly popular by the early 1800s, when several early 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.” - (collectorsweekly.com) Antique American Victorian - Lincoln Rocker Chair www.dicarloupholstery.com