Rocker: 3/4 view |
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Object Description
| Brief description | Rocking chair attributed to Heikki Saukko, Lakeside, Douglas County, 1890-1900. |
| Object name | Rocking chair |
| Maker | Saukko, Heikki |
| Date | 1890-1900 |
| Dimensions | 42 3/4"H x 24"W x 37"L (back = 11"W; seat = 24"W x 16"D) |
| Materials and techniques | Cedar |
| Marks | "18" is scratched into the face of the chair back |
| Original location | Lakeside, Douglas County, Wisconsin |
| Current location | Superior, Douglas County, Wisconsin |
| Description | This cedar rocking chair combines several unusual design and construction elements. Perhaps its most distinctive feature is the back splat, hacked from a single piece of wood that reaches all the way to the floor. The chair has six legs, all roughly hewn; the front legs feature a slight cabriole curve. The large curving arms are attached to the back by an additional piece of wood carved in a curve. While the back, seat, and tops of the arms have been worn smooth with use and their surfaces are bare, the entire underside of the chair is stained or painted a dark brown color. |
| History | This rocking chair is attributed to Heikki Saukko, a Finnish immigrant who lived in Lakeside, Wisconsin, a small community east of Superior. During the 1880s and 1890s, immigrants from Finland settled along the south shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, where they worked as laborers in logging camps, mines and fisheries. Lacking financial capital, they often made their household goods themselves rather than purchase them from commercial sources. The use of homemade goods, combined with isolation in ethnic enclaves in the rural north, meant that Finns in Wisconsin maintained their cultural traditions longer than other European immigrant groups. Saukko's chair includes several traditional Finnish features, including unfinished surfaces and a six-legged form. On the other hand, the dramatic profile and the use of a single backboard that goes all the way to the floor suggest some familiarity with new developments taking place in Scandinavian furniture design around the turn of the century. |
| Sources | Mark Knipping, Finns in Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2008). This chair was included in the exhibition "The Finest in the Western Country: Wisconsin Decorative Arts 1820-1900" at the Milwaukee Art Museum, 2008. |
| Owner | Douglas County Historical Society |
| Object # | A94-24-01 |
| Rights | (c) 2007 by the Douglas County Historical Society. Contact the owner for more information. http://www.douglashistory.org/ |
| Digital collection | Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database |
| Digital identifier | DC001 |
| Digital format | XML |
| Type | Physical object |
| Keywords | Furniture; Rocking chair; Chairs (furniture forms); Seating furniture; Furnishings (artifacts); Furnishings and equipment |
| Date digitized | 2011-07-08 |
| Date modified | 2011-07-08 |
Description
| Object name | Rocker: 3/4 view |
| Rights | (c) 2007 by the Douglas County Historical Society. Contact the owner for more information. http://www.douglashistory.org/ |
| Digital collection | Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database |
| Digital identifier | DC001a |
| Digital format | image/jpeg |
| Type | Physical object |
| Date digitized | 2007-08-31 |
| Date modified | 2007-08-31 |
