The design of the present chair manufactured by Fritz Hansen in the early 1930s transforms the traditional form of the rocking chair. In 1932, Poul Fritz and Søren Hansen had become the firm’s third generation of management. Under their direction, the company began producing designs enabled by new wood-bending technologies. During this period, Fritz Hansen also temporarily held the manufacturing rights for Thonet furniture, the company which first produced and patented technologies for bent wood furniture. The rocking chair’s inventive bent wood structure eliminates the conventional distinction between armrest and rocker. The organically shaped frames with suspended seat dissolve the mass of the traditional upholstered armchair, ensuring comfort and achieving a visual lightness. The design was featured in a 1932 issue of the newspaper Politiken in which it was described as ‘the spring sensation at Den Permanente’. The author predicted that, ‘All Copenhageners interested in furniture will make a pilgrimage to see this peculiar piece, and the young people who would have sworn that they would never have a rocking chair in their new home are starting to think again. When a rocking chair can be so fun to look at, while being good to sit in, then you have to revise your previous decisions.’

The present model rocking chair featured in Politiken, February 1932. The caption reads ‘Fritz Hansen’s modern rocking chair in bent wood’.
Image courtesy of Fritz Hansen
- Provenance
  Private collection, Denmark
- Literature
  Politiken, 8 February 1932, p. 4