Chair, Rocking
#6 production rocking chair with arms and cushion rail, South Family, Mount Lebanon, NY
Description
Rocking chair made of maple and cherry. Four back slats and a cross bar at the top, no finials. Crescent-shaped arms with mushroom-shaped tenon caps. Front posts taper at the top where they join the arms. The thin rocker blades taper beyond the rear posts. Dark stain. The taped fabric seat, blue and light beige, is a replacement. On the inside of the proper right rocker blade there is a decal remnant. "6" is stamped on the back of the top slat.
Notes
In the Shakers' chair catalogues of the 1870s and 1880s, this chair was described as a "number 6, slat-back, rocking chair with arms and a cushion rail." This design, produced in sizes ranging from size "0," for a young child, to "7," for a stout man, is the chair that the world came to identify as quintessentially Shaker and was made by the tens of thousands through the 1920s. Slat-back chairs could be bought with or without the cushion rail. Hanging a cushion on the rail certainly made sitting in the chair easier on the back.
New York Mount Lebanon South Family
