“It’s such a wonderfully eccentric idea that could only have been dreamt up by a Brit,” says Emerald Brown. She’s talking about swing seats — a subject that, as the co-owner of a company dedicated to making the idiosyncratic garden seating, she knows a fair bit about. ODD, so named because the founders sold oddities alongside their rockers, creates bespoke versions complete with soft cushions, pretty prints, tasselled trims and a whimsical tented canvas “roof”, which can live out in the garden all summer long.
“There’s a huge amount of nostalgia around them because so many people have happy memories of them from their childhood,” says Brown.
The first swing seats were made by the Edwardians and ODD’s Old Rocker harks back to those early designs. “It’s quite rare for a product that has changed so very little to have the same allure now as it did 100 years ago,” says Brown. Ahead of the brand’s Chelsea Flower Show debut last month, she put out a call for customers’ pictures of their family rockers; the oldest image she received was from 1924.
A century since Rudolph Valentino and Natacha Rambova were pictured in their Palm Springs rocker © Bridgeman Images
ODD was founded 22 years ago by Robin Buchanan, who ran tile brand Fired Earth, and his wife, Brigette, a former Vogue editor and co-founder of the Cabbages & Roses line of fabrics and furnishings. Their first swing seat was inspired by a version inherited from Brigette’s great-aunt, and quickly developed a following. As each seat was bespoke, and they only made 25-30 per year, waiting lists soon mounted.
