The year at BAM draws to an aptly titled close this week with All That Fall,
a darkly comic radio piece from legendary Irish playwright Samuel
Beckett. This production from Dublin group Pan Pan Theatre Company seats
audience members in their own personal rocking chairs—a staging that
seemed to call for some context. And lucky for you, dear blogophiles, we
traipsed the rolling hills of eastern Ireland to find you just the man
for the job.
Charles Shackleton hails from Dublin, and is a master craftsman of
handmade furniture—not to mention a champion crumpeteer, a devotee of
Irish oats, a fountain pen enthusiast, and a descendant of Antarctic
explorer Ernest Shackleton. He currently resides in Woodstock, Vermont,
where he and his master-potter wife Miranda Thomas own and operate
ShackletonThomas fine handmade furniture and pottery (visit their
website here for more
info and to ogle some gorgeous goods). We managed to pin Charlie down in
between crumpet competitions to ask his expert opinion on the
significance of the rocking chair. Here, for your enjoyment and
erudition, his musings.
IRISH SIGNIFICANCE
In Ireland, the rocking chair is most often associated with babies and
grandparents—often the latter knitting for the former, keeping an eye
out whilst the parents were out working and doing chores. The rocking
chair makes one think of the settle* and the open fire, perhaps with bread in the bastible* in the background.
Perhaps the rocking chair itself was the soothing device that allowed
the young and old, at the entrance and exit doors of life, to feel some
sense of peace and comfort—an ease that was not afforded to the younger
and middle hard-working stages of life.
The slow rocking beat resonating with the pulse of the human heart makes
the rocking chair one of the most anthropomorphic of objects. There is
always a sense of timelessness and serenity associated with it, a
feeling which belies the hard life and strife of the beautiful but raw
Irish west, and the harsh economic and physical conditions associated
with that region in particular.
ON CRAFT AND PROCESS
In the olden days, when things were primarily made by hand and the cost
of labor was low in relation to the cost of wood, the craftsman would
have made each part individually.
A properly made rocking chair is not just a chair with rockers on it;
the design has to “flow” as the chair moves back and forth. The stress
on the joint between the rockers and chair legs increases enormously
over time—and with various sizes of people—so the legs are designed to
absorb some of the mainly backward motion. It is also important to have a
seat back that will rest the head and shoulders when the body is rocked
backwards.
NATURAL BEAUTY
Of course, the rocking chair is a beautiful object in itself, with its
long sinuous rockers, curvaceous arms, and seat and back that enfolds
the human body. All carved from locally harvested wood—and with a seat
woven from the twisted oat straw left over from the grain used for the
making of bread and oat cakes—the traditional Irish rocker was truly of a
piece with the land.
—Charles Shackleton
FOOTNOTES
*Bastible was the lidded cast iron pot that is the precursor to the modern day oven, that hung above the open fire.
*The settle was a bench against the wall that could be pulled out and converted into a table for the purpose of saving space.
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