The craft of chair seat weaving and chair caning in particular, has been practiced for centuries and is still a viable craft today, practiced all over the world.
Similar cane or “wicker” weaves date back as far as Egyptian times with artifacts such as a woven daybed discovered that once belonged to King Tutankhamen, (1325 B. C.).
The techniques and materials have not changed much in all the years and only a few common tools are necessary to repair chair seats, making chair caning a craft that nearly anyone can master.
How is Chair Cane Used?
One of the ways the strips of cane are used for weaving chair seats is by weaving individual strips through a series of drilled holes around the perimeter of the chair called, the 7-Step Method of Hand Chair Caning. The weaving method design and material used has not changed much over several hundred years.
Here’s a brief video I put together of the steps and you can also go to my article on eHow.com to see a more in-depth Hole-to-Hole Chair Caning Instruction.
Although there are other hand or strand caning designs, the “7-Step Method” or “6-Way” traditional strand cane weaving pattern seems to be the most reliable and strongest for everyday use.
The cane strips are also woven by a loom into “sheets” or “panels” which also go by the name of “cane webbing.” This fabric-like material is used on chairs that have a routed out groove around the perimeter of the chair seat. The cane webbing is tamped down into the groove and held in place with a reed spline. And wider strips, ranging from 4MM-6MM are used in weaving porch chairs and rockers.
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Otherwise known as The Caner’s Bible this book makes it easy to restore cane rush splint Danish cord rawhide and wicker furniture… The Caner’s Handbook |
What is Chair Cane?
The chair cane used in seat weaving is the shiny, glossy skin or inner bark from the stem or trunk of the rattan palm, genus Calamus. There are hundreds of species, but only a few are suited for to produce the high quality needed for chair seat weaving.
Rattan palms grow primarily in the Far Eastern tropical areas of the world, such as Southeast Asia, including Sumatra and Malaysia, China, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
Calamus rattan is a single-stem climbing jungle vine that grows vertically for three or four feet, then jumps to an adjacent tree and begins to climb it.
The rattan can grow to great lengths up to as long as 600 feet, but the spans of 150-300 are more the norm. It has strong thorns which enable it to crawl through the jungle trees at will through the treetops.
The stalks are uniform in diameter, with those used for chair caning and wicker furniture ranging from 1/2″ to 1 1/2” and remain extremely flexible. Making this species of rattan skin, or bark and the inner pith called “reed,” desirable for basketmaking and wicker work as well as chair caning.
Commercial processing is done primarily in Singapore and Hong Kong, although there are also fine processing centers in Europe.
How do you tell Chair Cane from Rattan Reed?
There are sharp thorns on the outer portion of the rattan palm pole that are removed before the actual processing of the skin or bark called “cane” takes place. After the thorns are removed, the naturally glossy skin or bark is sorted, graded and stripped into various widths by machine and packed in hanks and coils.
This cane material is then used for both hole-to-hole chair caning, over-the-rail caning and sheet woven or spline caning. And because of the natural glossy feature of the cane, it does not accept either a stain or paint well.
The inner pith of the rattan palm is porous called “reed” and comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, used for weaving wicker furniture and weaving baskets, primarily.
Reed is processed in to round, flat, flat-oval and oval-oval reed, and packaged into typical one pound coils. And since unlike the glossy cane skin, reed is porous and does accept both stain and paint very well, so is an excellent material for woven wicker furniture and basketry alike.
For more information regarding the differences between cane and reed, see my article, “What are Cane & Reed?”
Stay tuned for more to come about Chair Caning…
