A practitioner of mesmerism using animal magnetism on a woman seated in an “easy” armchair. On the verso side, an advertisement for A. Brierre de Boismont’s 1845 Des hallucinations ou Histoire raisonnée des apparitions, des visions, des songes, de l'extase, du magnétisme et du somnambulisme (Hallucinations: or, the rational history of apparitions, visions, dreams, ecstasy, magnetism, and somnambulism).

Featured on PDR in the essay Postures of Transport: Sex, God, and Rocking Chairs

What if chairs had the ability to shift our state of consciousness, transporting the imagination into distant landscapes and ecstatic experiences, both religious and erotic? In an essay about the British and American fascination with rocking chairs and upholstery springs in the 19th century, Hunter Dukes discovers how simple furniture technologies allowed armchair travelers to explore worlds beyond their own.