Wish you could find a chair caning teacher? Need to locate a chair caning teacher near you to learn this traditional heritage handicraft? Frustrated that you can’t find someone to teach you?
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…
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 as well as on the Silver River Center for Chair Caning, which is the only seatweaving school and chair museum in the country.
Be sure to check out my Amazon Store for tons of very good instruction books on all aspects of seatweaving, including chair caning, splint, rush and more!
You can also check my annual teaching schedule at Cathryn’s Chair Caning & Basket Classes.
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.
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.
Youtube Chair Caning Instruction Videos
YouTube also has many good videos on chair caning and other types of chair seat weaving offered by several different teachers and hobbyists.
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!
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~~Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much ~~
Happy Weaving, until next time!
Hi Cathryn, I like your website — I am finding it very helpful. I’m trying to re-learn chair caning. I had a small chair caning business 35 years ago, but life took me in another direction. Now retired, I decided to try my hand at caning again. It’s amazing what I forgot! Also, I tripped over your account of visiting England, and would love to hear more about it! My daughter and I hope to visit England in the future and it would be nice to visit with our English counterparts, and learn something new/old.
Thank you Jan, glad you are finding my site helpful. Since you are getting back into seatweaving, I would suggest you start on the traditional How to Cane a Chair Seat by Hand page.
And then be sure to check out the Weaving Basics #101 page too for foundation articles on lots of other types of weaving. Since my site is so big and there are many blog posts and pages, using the Search feature is very helpful, too.
Use the Search to find more blog posts about my trip to England and all the fun I had with my host, Olivia Elton Barratt. Hope this helps, keep in touch!
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?
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.
Hi Rita,
Well, you can visit my blog post on the subject of Wicker Furniture Eras, and search through pictures online of wicker furniture to try and get an idea of the era, or you could request an appraisal from appraiser and wicker author Richard Saunders, who is listed on my Furniture Repair Directory. Then too, you could also look through these antique wicker furniture books
Good luck, hope this helps you on your quest!