A rocking chair with low seat (perhaps sold as a nursing chair) of dark-stained oak, with a rush seat, the uprights turned with flatted finials, the back composed of three rails, curved to provide comfort for the sitter.

A rocking chair with low seat (perhaps sold as a nursing chair) of dark-stained oak, with a rush seat, the uprights turned with flatted finials, the back composed of three rails, curved to provide comfort for the sitter.
The chair is of Arts-and-Crafts simplicity, with simple triple mouldings at the top and bottom of the turned from legs, the back legs square-sectioned and tapering below seat level, rising as turned back uprights above this height, with a triple-ring motif near the top and flat, bulbous finials. The chair has a box stretcher, the stretchers plain, rectagular. The ends are carved to curl up at the front and back, the curls at the back emphasised by and indentation cut just before the curl. The three, curved back rails are plain and are very thin, in the tradition of vernacular ladderback chairs. The seat is of rush, the back and front retaining their stained oak fillets to protect the edges of the rush, the sides having lost theirs.

Purchased from Mrs Knight Clarke, 23 Radnor Mews, W2 for £5 (Registered File 57/2346)

The firm of W. Birch & Co., who made this rocking chair, had been founded in High Wycombe, the centre of traditional Windsor-chair-making in 1840 by William Birch. The firm prospered and after his death in 1888 his son Walter took over the firm, changing the name to W. Birch & Co. in 1895. He modernised the firm, building a new factory, and became very successful at offering design of furniture derived from vernacular traditions to a new, middle-class market following the new enthusiasms of the Arts and Crafts Movement. By the end of the 1890s the firm was selling very successfully to the department store Liberty's, in London. This small-scale, low rocking chair could have been sold as a nursing chair, highly appropriate to the expensively simple nurseries sought for by followers of the new movement.

CIRC.135-1957