A Different Cane Design

 This nice set of Danish style arm chairs needed a new caning job.  But not the style you most often see.  The most popular style of caning has two vertical, two horizontal, and two diagonal strands forming an octagonal opening.   The design originally used on these chairs had just 4 strands,  two horizontal and two vertical, they were spaced such a way that little rectangular openings were formed.    Generally, whatever style of cane comes off the chair, we want to put back on, as we did here.  I think it turned out pretty neat looking, what do you think?

 Cane fibers naturally start out in the very pale color you see to the left.  They darken over time and become a nice mellow light brown.  It is most preferable to allow the cane to go through this aging process as you will then be able to keep the interesting slight variations in color that cane has.  But if you are re-doing one of a set then you have a problem.  You would have say, 5 chairs that had aged, and 1 chair that had new cane.  So in that case we are able to apply a colored finish to the cane to get it as close as possible to the rest of your set.  That is what we did below to achieve that color.  There is a risk involved in this process though.  The underside of the cane will then dry out at a different rate from the top of the cane which could cause it to crack at a later time.

So a decision would have to me made,  would you prefer the cane to age naturally, and have a longer life,  or would you prefer the chair to match the rest of your set right away, but not last as long?  Tell me what you think, I am curious what my readers would choose!