Bay Colony Antiques is delighted to offer for sale this fantastic early 20th century Antique Arts & Crafts / Mission Oak rocking chair. We buy & sell a fair amount of Mission furniture each year and for every 1 item we choose to offer, we probably see about 100 more. This chair caught our eye because of its unusual format. The chair has horizontal slats on the back with elongated stiles oftentimes referred to as “rabbit ears”. The chair has a woven cane seat with an orange label dated 1901 on the bottom from the Western Cane Seating Company of Michigan City Indiana. We don’t believe they made furniture and Michigan City’s close proximity to Chicago & Grand Rapids leaves the door open for a number of different makers. Additionally, since the woven seats are slip seats, the maker might not have been so local because we imagine they shipped these seats far & wide. The Ford & Johnson chair company was active in the area at the time, and the chair does share a few similarities to their products. We skimmed through a couple of their later catalogs but don’t own any of their publications before 1904.
This is a true porch rocker with long blades, paddle arms, and a 3 slat back with elongated rabbit ears. The seat is very generously sized and measures 20” wide between the arms (16 1/2” at back of arms) x 18 1/2” deep. There are a few cracks in the cane seat, but nothing that impedes use or compromises the structural integrity of the seat. We’ll remove the modern screws that are holding the seat in place and replace them with old appropriate slotted screws. The overall dimensions of the chair are 26 3/4 wide x 34” deep x 35” tall with a 15 1/2 seat height.
