The Thonet rocker, made 150 years ago by the steam bending method

The old rocking chair in the picture was made in 1860 by a great inventor and innovator, Michael Thonet. I told you a bit more about Thonet when I said the story of the best-selling chair of all time, known as "Thonet bistro chair no.14". Like the chair, the rocking chair created by Thonet is still a landmark for designers and furniture manufacturers worldwide. That's why I think it deserves a little attention from us too. 🙂

Rocking chairs don't officially have a very long history. It was originally thought to have been invented by Benjamin Franklin, but American historians have found evidence of rocking chairs as far back as the early 18th century, when Franklin was just a child. I believe that these swings have been around since people started working on their children's chairs and swings, the ones shaped like the rocking chairs and swings we had in the country. They couldn't have missed the idea of making some curved footrests so that the chair would swing like the hare in which the child sat.

But this is not about what I believe but about historical data. So we come to Michael Thonet, the man who industrially manufactured the first rocking chair. Thonet was a carpenter, a wood craftsman, who was born in 1796 in Germany. He invented the method of steam bending wood that is still used today. Starting with bending wood for boats - watering and heating - he moved on to steam-bending round sticks of fag, which he kept in metal containers for 5 hours under the action of steam, after which he took them out and immediately put them in moulds. The time in the moulds should not exceed 3 minutes because the wood would start to stiffen again and cracks would appear. This is exactly the method that is still used today for bending and that has been used for decades in our factories in Comănești and Pâncota. I am sure many people remember them.

With these curved elements Thonet has succeeded in making one of the most elegant and delicate rocking chairs, which has been reinterpreted over the years by many famous designers. It features elements of Roman and Greek architecture as well as Renaissance and Colonial influences.

As a year of birth he is considered to be 1860, with no clear document indicating the year. Only, about the Thonet chair No 14 it is known that it was the first chair made with curved elements and reached its final form in 1859. The factory founded by Thonet together with his 4 sons started to produce furniture at an industrial level, he made furniture accessible to the middle class, not only the privileged. Reaching ever higher production levels and increasingly varied designs, in 1883 Thonet published the first furniture catalogue containing 21 pages and 219 designs. The catalogue was soon followed by the second in 1886 and the third in 1888, with 30 pages and 339 models. With the help of these catalogues historians have managed to fix 1860 as the year of manufacture for the rocking chair.

In 1876 another famous rocking chair is created, Schaukelsofa No 7500. Apparently it was the creation of August Thonet, one of Michael's sons. He had died in 1871, leaving the company to his four sons.

This rocking chair was first made without arms, and soon afterwards the more popular model with arms was created. It did not have as long a life as the No. 1 rocking chair, as in 1914 its industrial production ceased and in 1921 the last rocking chair was made. Only 8,000 No. 7500 rocking chairs were made during this period, compared to 69,000 in total. For this reason it is the model most sought after by collectors.

Like cafe chair no.14, the rocking chair was also appreciated by many artists, appearing in several famous paintings of the time. Renoir's sketch "Woman in a Rocking Chair" or James Jacques Tissot's "Last Evening" are only two of them.

One of the greatest modern lovers of rocking chairs was US President John F. Kennedy. With severe back problems his doctor recommended he sit in one. Apparently the "therapy" worked so well that Kennedy ordered one to go on Air Force One. He was so enamored of rocking chairs that he gave them as gifts to everyone he knew, even giving them to heads of state.

Thonet GmbH still manufactures chairs in Germany and is run by the fifth and sixth Thonet generation. The famous Thonet chair No. 14 is now called 214, but is still made using the same method. There are other variations on the same theme, the 214K model being as amusing as it is suggestive of the method of manufacture.

As for the No.1 rocking chair, it is no longer manufactured, but it seems that its spirit lives on in the latest generation models.