The earliest entry for a rocking chair in Nathaniel Dominy V’s accounts is 1804 and the latest, 1830. This chair, made for his family’s use, are not recorded in his accounts but they can definitely be documented to his hand.
The seat was in poor shape in 1940 and was removed at Winterthur in 1957. Doing so, however, provided an opportunity to examine the mortise-and-tenon construction of the chair’s seat rails and stretchers. A concave notch was cut into the upper surface of a tenon. On a tenon that crossed over the concave notch, a chamfered facing was made enabling it to slide into the concave notch inside the mortise hole. The same locking system was used on many of the chairs made by Nathaniel Dominy V resulting in their remaining solid and tight to the present day.
