The following essay is from the 1989 publication American Furniture in the Bybee Collection, by Charles L. Venable.

The rocking chair is one of the few furniture forms that is uniquely American in origin. At the turn of the century, urban elites like J. Pierpont Morgan and Alfred G. Vanderbilt outfitted their camps or rural retreats with rustic furniture like this rocking chair.

Mortise and tenon joints are two pieces of wood connecting where a projecting tongue (tenon) of one piece is made to fit into the corresponding cutout (mortise) in the other piece.

This armchair embodies the hierarchy of family life in colonial British America.