The floor kept the motion after the chair stopped making it

A wooden rocking chair, drawn side-on in a coarse woodcut line, set off toward one side of the chest. Beneath its rockers, a shallow arc is worn into the floor — deeper at the middle of the arc than at either end. The rest of the chest, past the chair, is left as plain, empty floor.

The chair isn't in its old spot anymore. The floor kept the record anyway.

What's actually printed on the shirt?

One chair, one arc of wear, and a lot of open space. The chair sits toward one side rather than centred, rockers resting on a plain floor line. Under the rockers, a lighter, brushed mark curves into the floor, clearly the shape of something rocked back and forth many times over. Past the chair, the rest of the print is left bare.

Nothing else is drawn in — no figure, no child, no room around it. Just the chair, the mark it left, and the space where it used to be pulled up to.

Why print the worn floor instead of the motion that actually caused it?

Because a floor doesn't wear an arc into itself for no reason, and that arc is a better record of a repeated motion than trying to draw the motion directly would be.

A rocking chair rocked for long enough, night after night, leaves a mark a still chair never would. The wear is the proof — evidence a specific motion happened here, over and over, for however long it took to press an arc into the boards. Drawing the chair mid-rock would show one instant; the worn floor shows the whole accumulated history of it at once.

Why is the chair pushed off to one side instead of centred where it used to sit?

Because it isn't in daily use anymore, and the print leaves it exactly where it actually ended up — off to the side, out of the way, not restored to its old working position.

Putting the chair back in the centre of its own worn mark would tidy the story into something it isn't. The chair has been pushed aside; the floor still carries the shape of what happened there. Both facts are true at once, and the composition keeps them both rather than picking the neater one.

Is this really about the chair, or about something else entirely?

About something else — a particular hold and a particular rocking motion an adult's own body still performs, on nothing, long after the chair stopped being where it happened.

The chair is only the object that happened to record it. The motion itself shows up in other places now — rocked on the balls of the feet standing in a queue, a phone held and swayed the same way a different weight once was — and none of those leave a mark anywhere. The chair is the one place the habit ever got written down.

Does printing your own furniture like this need anyone's permission?

No — a plain, unbranded wooden chair from your own house carries no maker's mark worth licensing, and the wear pattern is unique to the one that made it.

Nothing about this print copies a manufacturer's design or a photograph anyone else owns. It's a drawing of one specific object, worn the way it was actually worn, which puts it squarely in the household's own hands.

Does this design work for a different piece of furniture, or a different motion?

Yes — any object that shows the wear of a motion repeated past the point of counting works the same way: a worn path on a rug, a smoothed patch on a stair rail, a groove worn into a windowsill.

What has to stay is the asymmetry — the object pushed to one side, the mark it left still visible, open space on the other side rather than a second matching object balancing the composition. A stair tread stepped over for no stated reason works the same way: a habit recorded by what it left behind, not by anyone explaining it.

Does it print well?

Yes — coarse woodcut linework and a two-ink palette are exactly the kind of flat, hard-edged mark that holds up at fabric's scale, contour and hatching included.

Keep the worn arc as a broad, simple sweep rather than trying to render individual wood grain inside it — the shape of the wear is what needs to read, not the texture of the boards underneath it. Bone for the chair and a single forest green for the shading is enough against a rust ground; a third ink would only compete with the two that are already doing the job.

How do I get one made?

Describe the chair at JustOG — what it is, where it's ended up, and the arc it left behind. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Nobody's sat in that chair in years. The floor hasn't forgotten it either.