Daniel Jackson
Rocking Unicorn, 1974
Made in Jackson’s Philadelphia studio in 1974.
After seeing Jackson’s Rocking Horse (made for his daughter) at America House in New York City, mod fashion designer Wayne Rogers’ wife, an interior designer, commissioned the Rocking Unicorn as a Christmas gift for her husband. It was delivered by Dan Jackson and his wife Julia Browne during the Rogers’ 1974 Christmas Eve party at their home in northern New Jersey. Following Rogers’ divorce, he took the Unicorn with him to Palm Beach, Florida. After his death, it went into a storage facility.
The Rocking Unicorn is one of the most important pieces made by Jackson. It was thought to be lost at the time of his 2003 retrospective, “Daniel Jackson: Dovetailing History,” at the University of the Arts – and was only recently rediscovered in Florida by Moderne Gallery.
Summing up his approach to design, Jackson said:
“There is not a great difference between the two (sculpture and furniture). Furniture must fill a specifc function. Then it can go on to be aesthetic. Sculpture is purely aesthetic from the beginning. What I am trying to do is marry the
two.”
Literature: Daniel Jackson: Dovetailing History, 2003, p. 20 and 59
Daniel Jackson was born in Milwaukee in 1938. His mother was an antique dealer, and he was buying and restoring antiques by the age of 13. His later training was based in the Scandinavian approach to design, having studied under Tage Frid at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He followed that with an apprenticeship to Peder Moos in Denmark from 1960-62.
| Dimensions | 84 × 22 × 91 in |
|---|---|
| Artist | |
| Date | 1974 |
| Material | Curly Maple, Oak, Pine |
| Style |
