The Glider Rocker At Home in Nusery and Den
A glider rocker often looks like any other chair, except it has an extension for your feet and can be used to create a soothing swinging motion. This kind of furniture is popularly used by parents for feeding babies (and of course rocking them to sleep). These chairs tend to be better than traditional rocking chairs on account of the potential pinch points being more out-of-the-way and thus safer.
The glider rocker is a popular feature of many a nursery, or dedicated baby’s bedroom. In addition, such a place can contain a crib and a diaper change table. By way of contrast, glider rockers can be used by adults. Indeed, many such chairs comprise living room seating.
And small wonder at that!. Kicking up one’s feet is immensely relaxing, especially after a hard day’s work on the feet! Even for office workers who are mostly sedentary, elevating the feet can help with blood pressure. Then there’s just the fact of laying down, with the whole body at repose, totally supine. Finally, there is the rocking or swinging motion, which seems oddly complementary to activities like reading, listening to the radio, or watching television.
A glider rocker is sometimes simply moved to the nursery. As, for instance, where a nursing mother can ease back and relax while breastfeeding, rocking soothingly back and forth for herself and the child. When the child grows up, the chair can resume its general service in the living room once again.
Glider rockers arose from the classic rocking chair, credited by some to Ben Franklin himself despite the lack of corroborating documentation. Nonetheless, it is almost certainly American in origin. Apparently they were used as garden seating in the early eighteenth century. A couple of centuries thereafter, handy folding types came on the scene. It is Sam Maloof, however, who gets the credit for the familiar ski-shaped rockers, reportedly introducing them during the 1950s.
Called (what else? but) rockers, such furniture creates an ergonomic benefit by automatically tilting backwards, which motion promotes a reactionary movement in the opposite direction. One such type, the platform rocker, even has a spring in its base. Gliders use swinging braces. Thanks to the modern preoccupation with health and fitness, such chairs are becoming popular once more, not just for the home but increasingly at work, too.