How to Find a Chair Caning Teacher

Wish you could find a chair caning teacher? Need to locate a chair caning teacher near you to learn this traditional handcraft?

Since I’m frequently asked how to locate a chair caning teacher or chair seat weaving instructor, I thought that would make a helpful blog post. So here goes…

Students selecting cane from their bundles during Cathryn Peters' North House Chair Caning Class
Chair caning students in my class at
North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN

Although I have already addressed this question of locating a chair caning teacher on the SeatWeaving FAQ page, we can go into more depth here on this post.

Search the Internet–find your teacher

With the invention of the Internet, searching for a chair caning teacher has become very easy and quick when you compare it to the “olden days of the early 1990s” before we had the world at our fingertips!

When you search online for someone to teach you how to cane, you will come up with several chair caning instructors to choose from.

Several of us have our own courses available for on-demand viewing and some are live so you can follow along and ask questions, too.

Many of the professional seatweavers listed on my National Furniture Repair Directory™ also teach classes, so look through the ads in your city or state to see if there’s someone you can learn chair seat weaving from.

There are some excellent chair caning instructions online on websites such as my own, WickerWoman.com, Wayne Sharp’s chair caning site, as well as on the Silver River Center for Chair Caning, which is the only seatweaving school and chair museum in the country.

You can also check my annual teaching schedule at Cathryn’s Chair Caning & Basket Classes.

TSWG board members
TSWG 2015-16 Board Members

Find Teachers through Weaving Organizations

The SeatWeavers’ Guild, Inc.® (TSWG) website under the Member Teacher page has a full listing of chair caning and seat weaving teachers.

Guild members all across the country who, besides repairing and replacing seating, are also excellent instructors.

This guild specializes in teachers who do all kinds of techniques, weaving with all sorts of materials.

Some chair caning teachers offer classes in their studios, some teach at folk schools and some teach through basket guilds, conventions or community education classes.

cathryn-teaching-chair-caning
Cathryn teaching hole-to-hole caning at
North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN

Find Teachers in Basket Guild Workshops & Conventions

Check with the basket guilds across the country to see if anyone is offering a chair caning class at the conferences and workshops you attend.

apply binder cord caning

Youtube Chair Caning Instruction Videos

Youtube also has many good videos on chair caning and other types of chair seat weaving, offered from a number of different teachers and hobbiests.

You might like to take a look at an instructional video series called “Chair Caning Tips” that I made on my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/thewickerwoman and on my website at https://www.wickerwoman.com/how-to-videos

Newspapers, Community Ed & Word of Mouth

Then, there’s the old-fashioned way of checking with your local community education board, local colleges, bulletin boards around town, and newspaper ads to see if there’s someone near you willing to teach their skills of chair caning.

Asking your friends and neighbors is also a good way to find someone knowledgeable and willing to pass on this traditional craft of chair seat weaving.

Let me know in the comments below if I’ve missed any of the ways you use for locating a chair caning teacher! Now get your chair caning on!

wicker braid separator graphic

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3 thoughts on “How to Find a Chair Caning Teacher”

  1. Hello, I live in Rochester, NY and haven’t found anyone to help me out.
    I have a lovely antique rocking chair with a woven caned seat and back. The problem is that the caning is very, very dry and crumbles easily. Can it be saved or must I recant it?

  2. I have two pieces of old wicker furniture that are in great shape. They have wood frames. I have no idea how old they are, is there anyway to identify what vintage they would be? i couldn’t find any markings on the frame. The seats have been upholstered but they are not the original fabric.

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