Mademoiselle Rocking Chair

During the mid-20th century, Finnish furniture designer Ilmari Tapiovaara worked with pine, teak and his country’s native birch to create sleek and sculptural chairs, dining room tables and bookcases in the Scandinavian modern style. Tapiovaara’s areas of expertise expanded beyond furniture to include interior architecture, wooden sculptures, film posters and cutlery.

After completing his studies at the Central School of Applied Arts in Helsinki, Tapiovaara embarked on a design career that would envelop his entire life. As a young man, Tapiovaara idolized revered architect and furniture designer Alvar Aalto — whom, with his wife, Aino Aalto, cofounded Artek, the company that would eventually manufacture the majority of Tapiovaara’s creations. The budding designer had one of Aalto’s chairs in his apartment while he was a student. After graduating, he worked as an assistant in an office at Le Corbusier, then as a designer and artistic director at Asko. 

By 1951, Tapiovaara and his wife, Annikki, had established their own studio. A few years previous, the pair had designed the now-legendary Domus chair while creating interiors and furnishings for a new student housing complex in Helsinki. Made of molded plywood and easily stackable, the ergonomic Domus chair, with its slender form, featured a modest silhouette — its lightweight structure allowed for easy exporting, and iconic mid-century modern furniture manufacturer Knoll added a low-backed version to its offerings in the early 1950s. (It was marketed as the Finn chair in the United States.)

Tapiovaara went on to design pieces for Pihlgren ja Ritola and Santa and Cole. His experience earned him teaching positions at the Institute of Applied Arts, the Helsinki University of Technology and the Illinois Institute of Technology. While in Chicago for the latter, he worked in the office of Mies van der Rohe.

Tapiovaara centered his passion for design on social responsibility. He wanted his creations to be accessible to everyone, which was the concept behind his democratic approach. In Finland’s postwar era, the goal was exemplary, affordable designs. With this in mind, he created products such as stackable chairs and “knock-down” pieces packed flat, so they shipped efficiently and cost less. 

An influential champion of his profession, he spent two decades as a United Nations ambassador, working to improve design’s contribution to society. His lasting, collectible furniture is a testament to the designer’s goal to create humane, radiant and intimate spaces. The United Nations project included traveling to Paraguay to create much-needed furniture. A similar project followed in Mauritius.

Tapiovaara’s success as an industrial and mass producer of everyday furniture was widely recognized and awarded. He received six gold medals for his chairs alone at the Milan Triennials. He also accepted a Good Design award, the Finnish State Design Award, a prize from the Finnish Culture Foundation and the Furniture Prize of the SIO Interior Architects’ Association of Finland.

Find vintage Ilmari Tapiovaara seating, tables and lighting on 1stDibs.

The phrase “rocking chair” didn’t find its way into the dictionary until the mid-18th century. While most of the sitting furniture that we use in our homes originated in either England or France, the iconic rocking chair is a quintessentially American piece of furniture.

A Philadelphia cabinetmaker’s bill for a proto-rocking chair issued in 1742, which identified the seat as a “Nurse Chair with rockers,” is the earliest surviving evidence of this design’s humble beginnings. The nurse chair was a low side chair intended for nursing women, so giving it a soothing rocking motion made sense. Rocking chairs, which saw a curved slat affixed to the chairs’ feet so that they could be literally rocked, quickly gained popularity across the United States, garnering a reputation as a seat that everyone could love. They offered casual comfort without the expensive fabrics and upholstery that put armchairs out of many families’ budgets.

Rocking chairs are unique in that they don’t just offer a place to rest — they offer an opportunity to reminisce. The presence of one of these classic pieces stirs up our penchant for nostalgia and has the power to transform a space. They easily introduce a simple country feel to the city or bring the peaceful rhythm of a porch swing into a sheltered sunroom. Although craftsmen took to painting and stenciling varieties of the chairs that emerged in New England during the 19th century, the most traditional rocking chairs are generally unadorned seats constructed with time-tested materials like wood and metal. As such, a minimalist vintage rocking chair can be ushered into any corner of your home without significantly disrupting your existing decor scheme or the room’s color palette.

In the decades since the first rocker, top designers have made the piece their own. Viennese chair maker Michael Thonet produced a series of rockers in the middle of the 19th century in which the different curved steam-bent wood parts were integrated into fluid, sinuous wholes. Mid-century modernists Charles and Ray Eames added wooden rockers to their famous plastic shell armchair, while Danish designer Frank Reenskaug opted for teak and polished beech, introducing pops of color with small cushions (a precursor to the bold works that would follow in the 1970s and 1980s).

No matter your personal style, let 1stDibs pair you with your perfect seat. Deck out your porch, patio or parlor — browse the vintage, new and antique rocking chairs in our vast collection today.