It's been in my family for many generations. I got it from my mother. She gave it to me about 20 years ago. And it's always been called the Evans chair. It came down through the Evans family. And another little insider family joke that we have is that the Evans all have wide bottoms so because it's a wide-bottom chair...So, besides that, I don't know anything. How do you use the chair? We have it sitting in the corner in our bedroom, and I usually drape a quilt over top of it. Where do you think the chair was made? Uh, probably in the southern New Jersey, Delaware Valley area, most likely. That's where our family is from. Okay, well, this is actually-- and the reason I'm so excited about this is... I'm glad you're excited. It's a really very rare, original, circa 1750... paint-decorated and turned, ladderback armchair. And what I love about this chair and what makes it Delaware River Valley, 1750, are all the elements-- the turnings in the form...

But this is particularly elegant and vertical. The turner's art was an incredible art in the 18th century and they had these big lathes, they'd turn out these spindles. And in the stiles on the side and the front stretcher. This is a bold, incredible Baroque stretcher. It really is very gutsy. Now, this foot is a sort of blunt-arrow foot, very rare, and all the verticality is capped by these little pointed cones that you see, these pointed balls. This has its original rush seat. Well, it's like wood splint, isn't it? Exactly, it's woven splint, totally original. Looked at that color. And because this is all different woods, it was meant to be painted. So they covered it all in red paint. Now, this has had several coats of paint. If you look here on the stile, it has green, there's a bright orange, red. But under there is the original paint. And then this serpentine ladderback, which we see here, shaped to the back of the person sitting in it. Do you know about the one condition issue on this that...?

Well, I'm wondering, was this broken?It would have had another arch here, which is gone.reclining chair with ottoman sale But it's an old break.chairs for sale at staples Also, this would have had a cushion in it originally. rattan hanging chairs for saleHave you ever had it appraised?foam bean bag chairs cheap There was an antique dealer that offered my mother $500 for it back in the early '70s.ikea desk chair wheelsWell, because of all the things we talked about, I would put an auction estimate on this Delaware Valley chair at about $8,000 to $12,000.where to buy plastic webbing for lawn chairs

It's a pretty amazing chair.Guest blog entry by Delaware Valley ladder back chair.rocking chair for less Wood:  Craft, Culture, Historycheap accent chairs ikea of the Pennsylvania Germansbuy used beach wheelchair 500 Chairs:  Celebrating Traditional and InnovativeI built my first rocking chair in 1982. Ever since, I have steadily worked to improve my design, joinery and finishing skills. Today, I'm proud to make heirloom-quality chairs that will last for generations. For me, chair making is the most satisfying form of furniture making,  not just because chairs are quite challenging to make but because I get to use and enjoy them every day. I totally enjoy sharing what I know about making chairs and chair making tools.

I teach these skills in "My Shop" and I donate chairs to the Carter Center and Good Samaritan Boys Ranch near Springfield, Missouri fund raising auctions each year. I could not ask for a better way to help others and share what I do. I admire the Japanese woodworker's skills, precision and sense of tradition. I strive to apply these traits to the chairs that I make. Even though I take some liberty with design, I am committed to preserving the skills and traditions of the Appalachian Ladder Back and Colonial Windsor chair makers.Handcrafted Ladderback Chairs, Bar Stools, Pub Chairs, Footstools and more. Made in the USA since 1938. Black Worn Black 24" 30" BSO-18Van Jacobean Golden on Birch Salem Stain Vintage Cherry Black Worn Finish (+$25.00) Black-Semi-Gloss (+$25.00) Unfinished (-$14.60) Ladder-back Side Chairs (SOLD) This early pair of Delaware Valley ladder-back side chairs is exceptional for their fine turnings, original paint history with blue as the first coat, original yellow painted rush seats and turned caps on the seat frames.

~ ITEM DETAILS ~ Dimensions: H 45", W 19 ½", D 17 ¾" Date / Circa: c.1740-70 Maker / Origin: S. E. PennsylvaniaEditor’s note: This story originally appeared in the January 2013 issue of Our State. Ed Rimmer is precise about his time. Came out of the service in 1946. Worked in the dairy business for 26 years. Sold his cows in ’73. Member of the Troutman Volunteer Fire Department for 23 years. Started at the Troutman Chair Company in ’87. Since ’87, his weekdays have gone like this: Ed rises at 5:15 a.m. He’s at work by 7. He shuffles his way back to his corner of the factory among stacks of unfinished rockers. He’s precise there, too. He flips the switches. Lines up drill bits. He turns on the drill and buzzes holes into the legs of children’s rocking chairs. He puts those legs into a press, two at a time. He puts slats into the form. He steps on the foot pedal. The press squeezes with 60 pounds of pressure. He takes the completed parts, an H with two rungs, and sets them atop a neat stack.

He grabs more legs. He repeats this all nearly 100 times. He leaves by 3:45 p.m. He climbs into bed at 10:30. He wakes at 5:15. Before the presses arrived in the factory in Troutman, just north of Lake Norman, three people did this job, hand-hammering slats into chair legs. Now it’s just Ed. The white hair he has is cropped close. His thick glasses have plastic protectors on the sides. He wears a tight, white T-shirt and baggy jeans. He’s got some time left, he’s decided. Ed’s father died at 101. He has an older brother and an older sister, both in their 90s. He’d rather not sit around. “I just work,” Ed says. The Troutman Chair Company is a factory full of Eds. The plant is full of corners and workbenches, band saws and rodding machines. Everybody comes in, finds his or her spot, and turns square planks into rounded boards fit for a rocker. Each one is assigned a step of the chair’s assemblage. Some cut the wood. Mothers and sons work here. Of the 30 people working here, only two have been doing so for fewer than 13 years.

People come to work. They tend to sit still. Charlotte Douglas International Airport placed rocking chairs in its atrium in 1997 as part of a temporary photography exhibit called “Porchsitting.” The chairs were intended to be idle props. But given that they gave the atrium the feel of, well, a porch for sitting, people just started to sit.So did the rockers. Airports across the nation copied. Jean and Champ Land, then owners of Troutman Chair Company for a few years, were flying out of Charlotte with their children in the mid-2000s. They sat, too, but didn’t particularly care for the chairs. So Champ called the airport. I’ve got some better ones, he said. Now there are more than a hundred Troutman rockers at the airport, from the atrium to the elbow of Concourse E. Some face the tarmac and the planes. Some face inside so you can sit, rock, and watch everyone else hustle. When you sit, you can’t help but rock. Pushing down gently with the soles of your feet, swaying with your own internal rhythm.

The nervous can’t push fast enough. The content seem to look up. The busy look down. bodies sway like reeds blowing in a breeze. It’s a perch from which to watch the world pass. With a rocking chair, you envision a porch, or a parlor, or a grandparent; you imagine serenity, present or not. In a digital world, rockers are analog. iPhones, therapists … you don’t need all that, Jean says. Want kids to talk? Put them in rockers. She has a bunch on her back porch. During Bible studies she leads, they’re never empty. “If you go to the principal’s office, and he’s got you sitting in a rocking chair instead of in a straight chair,” she says, “you probably would confess everything that you had done wrong.” Jean Land doesn’t like to sit still. She says, “Oh my lands,” when she’s excited. Her husband, Champ, is the quiet one. But when Champ heard in 1998 that the Troutman factory was for sale, he couldn’t stop talking about it. A dealer told him he’d bought a diamond in the rough.

“We’ve been polishing it ever since,” Champ says now. They kept the design. It was a good design, Champ said. He’s only made small changes. He rounded the back a touch to make it more comfortable for all. Jean slouches when she does sit, he insists. Jean’s reply: “You’re just not sitting right.” Jean and Champ made one more change. Rockers are more commodity than corporate brand, and there was no way to tell for sure where a chair came from. So they began stamping the Troutman Chair Company logo on a small stainless steel arm brace. If it’s not there, it’s not theirs. Just check under the arms on the rockers at Charlotte’s airport. The various styles of rocking chairs do, however, come with majestic names. Rockers come with a long, distinguished history, too. Mark Twain sat in one. Lincoln was shot in one. President Kennedy’s doctor prescribed him a rocking chair for his back pain. The action of his pushing loosened the muscles in his back. Kennedy started sitting in rockers everywhere.

In the Oval Office. On Air Force One. A national craze was born. “As word of that got around, there was a great rummaging in the national attic,” Life magazine said in an eight-page spread in 1961. A chair-seeking nation swamped the company that made Kennedy’s rockers, P&P Chair Co. in Asheboro, with orders. P&P regretted to say that its little factory might not be able to keep up and that some people may have to wait. The workers appeared with that 1961 Life story, 24 in all, sitting in Kennedy rockers, smiling at the camera. The grinning owner, William C. Page, sitting up front, uttered the most Southern of lines: “Well I declare!” Now Jean and Champ own P&P, too. When they bought the name and design in 2009, some parts for the Kennedy rockers were imported. They stopped that practice. Jean and Champ sell thousands of Troutman and P&P rockers a year. Most in the summers. Most at family-owned stores. Troutman chairs aren’t found at Cracker Barrel or Lowe’s.

During fall and winter, the chairs stack up inside the factory. The boxes in the warehouse sit and wait. Champ’s usually in the office on the phone. Jean paces the factory floor. As she goes — she’s always going — a blond ponytail bounces behind and her boots clap. She walks up on Olga Chavez and Maria Alba. They haven’t been told to do so, but they know it needs doing. “They are just on it,” Jean says. Jean points at a man working a machine along a far wall. “You’re gonna love his name,” she says. It’s John Wayne Wyatt, she says smiling, then turns and moves on. “Want to see the dry kiln?” Jean asks, already starting toward the dry kiln. “Where we boil posts?” Along the way, Jean explains the process. Logs of North Carolina oak and ash arrive. They’re stacked like Jenga blocks to dry for up to a year. Then they’re planed, rolled, shaped, and sawed. Chair backs are curved in a kiln. Other pieces are drilled, hand-sanded, tumbled, pressed, nailed, squeezed, and stained or painted.

The completed chair goes into a cardboard box marked “Troutman Chair Company: World’s Best Rockers,” although the World’s Best Rockers part is a little boastful for Jean’s and Champ’s liking, so it won’t be there much longer. Ten months after a log rolls in, chairs roll out. The company tries not to waste much. Wood scraps go into the boiler that heats the plant. A dairy farmer picks up the sawdust. Workers scavenge leftover parts. Jean walks by a phalanx of posts and picks up one. “Feel how heavy this is,” she says. It’s made from one piece of wood, never glued together. Jean walks past Tania Alvarado and stops. “Do you have your 15-6 side slats, sweetness?” she asks. “She’s amazing,” Jean says. Tania makes the seats. First she runs them through a saw to make sure the boards come out even. Then she drills holes and hammers in nails, forcefully enough to get through, but gently enough not to indent the wood. She can crank out 120 seats in a day.