The inlaid bedroom chair
A slender inlaid chair with its cane back broken and a worn green seat.
It went home with a new hand-woven cane back panel and a new studded seat.
Chair caning, bergère, rush and cord seats
The seat is usually the first thing to go on a good chair. Craig reweaves them by hand in his Bankfoot workshop.
Hand caning, bergère suites, rush and cord. Granny’s bedroom chair, or a mid-century armchair that’s been sat through.
Four kinds of seat
Chair caning
Hand caning is woven strand by strand through holes in the frame. When a section breaks and sags, like this seat, the cane is cut out and the seat woven again.
Bergère
Bergère chairs and suites are caned on the back, the sides and the seat. This pair came in with all three torn, ready for recaning.
Rush
Rush is twisted and woven round the seat rails. A fresh rush seat shows the four-way pattern meeting in the middle.
Cord
Paper cord, including Danish cord, is woven tight across the frame. It is the seat on a lot of mid-century chairs.
Chairs that went home with new seats
The mid-century cord armchair
The woven paper cord seat had worn and broken through.
A new paper cord seat was woven onto the frame, tight and even.
Orkney chairs and other old friends
The Orkney chair grew up where trees were scarce, and the first ones were made with driftwood. Their straw backs are often in better shape than their seats.
Craig has rewoven rush seats under straw backs, bobbin-turned stools and pairs of ladder-back chairs.
My Uncle Charles’ nursery chair was in a sad state. Scruffy, loose inlay and a seat that needed re-caning big-time.
Send a photo of the seat
Take one of the whole chair, one of the seat from above and one from underneath. That shows Craig how it was woven.