What would happen if you built a rocking chair using materials and techniques traditionally employed in making bicycles? With the Randonneur Chair, it turned out to be a hot-looking piece of home furnishing.
Named after the long-distance cycling sport, the rocking chair, literally, looks like a bunch of bicycle parts (look at those racing handlebars) that have been repurposed into a seating furniture that rocks back and forth. Except it isn’t, since furniture designers Andrew McDonald and Simon Taylor of Two Makers actually crafted the entire thing from scratch.
With a framework cobbled together by hand using Reynolds 631 tubing (which is highly regarded as among the best bicycle tubing materials to this day), the Randonneur Chair looks like an actual bicycle frame. Heck, it even comes complete with a pair of bottle cages, so you can arm it with Aquabot-reinforced Camelbaks for instant water battles while you’re rocking back and forth in the yard, enjoying a cigar, and reading a book filled with pictures (hey, no shame in admitting you only read books with lots of pictures). If the geometry seems vintage, that’s because it is, since they drew most of their inspiration from the hand-built racing and touring bicycles manufactured back in the 1940s.
It uses sustainable sapele hardwood for the curved rockers and a Brooks-made bicycle saddle leather for the seat. And just to complete the bicycle theme, they threw in a small pouch in the back of the seat, which can probably hold a cellphone, a pair of glasses, or a couple of stogies.
The Randonneur Chair can be ordered directly from Two Makers.