Chinaman’s File is a rocking chair inspired by the approximately 16,500 Chinese gold diggers who walked from Robe in South Australia to the Victorian goldfields during the mid-nineteenth century.

In his book ‘Attachment’, John Bowlby explored the innate human longing for movement, particularly the calming rocking motion of being walked by our mothers. He proposes this is encoded into our DNA. Combining this research with the nomadic prospecting activities of the Chinese gold diggers in 19th Century Australia — and an assumed longing for the feminine, motherly influences they left at home in China — Trent Jansen has developed the Chinaman’s File Rocking Chair.

The simple form of Chinaman’s File hides an intricate mechanism that mimics the exact motion of a child slung to a mother’s back. This motion was captured by Jansen through careful modelling of film footage capturing a mother walking with a child in a studio environment: the ergonomics of intimacy.