Re-Weaving a Wicker Hamper

This wicker hamper was shipped to us from out of town.  We have gotten several out of the area clients lately who think so highly of our work that they are willing to pay the postage.  This vote of confidence makes us very happy!  

What makes us sad is that someone used this lovely hamper as a stepping stool.  Just so you all know, you should never, ever use your woven furniture for standing on.  It is very sturdy stuff, but doesn't like shoes.  We once had a chair come in that actually had a high heel shaped hole in the seat!  Oops!

Fortunately we can re-weave broken items like this.  We had to straighten out the metal shelf support and then weave a brand new shelf.  As you can see, there were also lots of little broken strands on the hamper and on the decorative 'back splash'.   With little breaks like this we just weave in a new strand, rather that re-weave the entire basket.    The new fibers come in a pale 'natural' shade.  Since the entire hamper is not being re-woven we will need to make a custom stain color and use it to touchup the repaired areas.  

Danish Box Weave Folding Chair

This low folding chair is woven with a 'Danish Box Weave' pattern.  Clearly it had suffered some significant damage to the seat.  Maybe someone tried to use it as a stepping stool?  Just for future reference, woven furniture should never be used under foot!  It is sturdy enough to sit on, but when you have your entire weight on one small (foot sized) area of the weaving,  especially if the fibers are old and brittle, then those fibers can break.  Once one strand breaks,  the surrounding area becomes weaker and other strands nearby tend to start breaking.  Then you have a problem!  And then you need to do what this client did and bring that chair in to us.

We re-wove the seat of this chair using traditional danish weave materials.  This material is called 'danish cord' and is actually made out of paper!  The cord is waxed so it has something of a protective coating, but if it is really soaked then those fibers become weak, just like regular paper.  As long as you keep furniture woven with danish cord inside, then it should last you for years and years to come.  If you look closely at the 'finished' side of the top picture you can see that the back of the chair is darker then the seat.  This is because, like all weaving materials, it darkens over time.  Eventually you will not notice that the seat and back are different shades. 

 Hopefully at that point no one breaks the weaving in the back, because then we would have to start all over!

Decorative Weaving Colors

When this cute little stool came to us it had a very similar weaving pattern, but it was so faded out that the color was hardly visible.  So we removed the old weaving and then stripped the wood down so that it was bare.  It then needed to be prep sanded and stained.   The stool has a beautiful, rich looking water based Brown Cherry Stain, with a Semi Gloss finish over the top.  Gorgeous!   Then it was time for the weaving.  While we can use almost any pattern or material at our shop, this particular client wanted to keep the weaving looking like the original.  So to do that, we used a Flat Reed as the material.  We colored some of it with a dark green dye.  Flat reed takes color very well, much better then most of the other weaving materials, which makes it ideal for a multi color pattern like this one.   Our weaver then used a herringbone pattern, weaving one direction with natural colored reed, an the other direction with the dyed reed.  The completed result is a very cool looking bench that should look beautiful and be functional for many years to come.

Weaving Samples for Inspiration

We have a fun project we are working on for our office that I want to share with you.  Very soon, when you come into our office, you will see a beautiful display of cane samples hanging on our walls.   Most people only are familiar with one  cane pattern, generally known as '6 strand'.  We wanted to give our customers a better idea of the variety of weaves available, in case the inspiration would give them an idea about a different look for their chair.  We have 8 completed samples so far and saveral more beatiful designs on the way.  In these photos you can see a ‘4 Strand’ weave, ‘Victoria’, ‘Double Victoria’, ‘Star Of David’, ‘Daisies’, ‘Double Daisies’, and ‘Daisy and Buttons’.  These are just a few weaving examples, there are som any out there to choose from.  We can also weave colored strands into the design, and weave in beautiful center medallions.  I will post photos of those for you later. 

We would love for you to bring us your chair, and work with us to find a beautiful, different, decorative weave, that will set your chair apart from the rest.

Hand Woven Radio Weave

In my last post, I told you about the challenges we had with a radio weave/box weave on a machine caned chair.  Interestingly enough,  we are doing another radio weave/box weave, in the same week!  It is not a particularly common pattern, so this is pretty neat.  Of course, it couldn't be just an ordinary box weave,  it is a box weave on a rattan frame, instead of a normal caned seat frame which has holes drilled into it to weave the fibers through.

This means that each strand has to be wrapped around the frame and twisted around a tiny hidden nail to secure it in place.  And the strands at the top  have to be threaded between the two rattan poles and then wrapped around the nail which is even more tricky.  

One of the things that makes hand caning so interesting and special is that instead of a perfectly even weave, where each hole is almost the exact same dimensions (as it would be with machine caning),  with a hand weave there is some variegation to the pattern.  This give each individual chair it's own special look.

The Challenges of Machine Cane Weaving

With The Spline Cut To Size And Drying To Shape

 We do quite a bit of traditional hand caned seats here at the shop but we also do a good amount of unique caning besides that.  This chair back needs two 'windows' of machine caning, giving us a unique shape to work with and also a unique weave.  The set of chairs has a 'radio net' weave which is made up of perpendicular strands of cane done in a box pattern.  The chair also has a curved back which gives us yet another challenge to work with.   

Masked Of Weaving, Before & After Staining

Curved weaving has to be put in place by someone who really knows what they are doing.  If it is not done well,  then the weaving panel can distort and either 'cup' or 'buckle' leaving a surface you would not be happy with.  In addition, the glue which holds the woven panels in place can drain out if not done well leaving patches of dry spline, allowing the machine cane to come undone.  Not good!

Another big challenge with machine woven cane is just getting the old stuff out! If it was originally put in well, then it is going to be really stuck in there.  It has to be chiseled out, which if not done by an expert hand, can chip the wood, leaving you with a much bigger problem then you started with.

Here at the shop we are fortunate enough to have an expert Furniture Weaver, and she did a beautiful job on this difficult task.

Have you ever tried machine or hand weaving before? We would love to hear how it went!

Antique Bench with Woven A Seat

 This great antique bench came to us not long ago with broken weaving on the seats.  No wonder since the cane was very small for the number of holes use on the bench.  That meant the weaving was very open, and with thin cane it was to weak to support a very heavy person.  Maybe it was meant for children?   So with pieces of cane snapping and breaking through out the weaving, they took it to us for help.

We re wove it by hand, with a wider cane so that the seats would have more strength.  After weaving, Tung Oil was applied to the top and bottom of the woven sections.  This will help increase the life of the cane by giving it flexibility, resiliency, and keep it from drying out.  The Tung Oil also gives the top surface of the cane a bit of an amber color instead of the bright whitish color that it naturally comes in.

This seat is such a cool piece, the age and use shows through in the wood in ways you don't often see.  Such as the beam that runs across the front, just above the ground has been worn unevenly by peoples feet!  The middle section is still pretty thick but the side two sections have valleys worn into them.


I so enjoy when unique pieces like this come to us,  it is such fun imagining the history and finding out how it was used.  What is the most unique piece of furniture you have stumbled across?  Do you have some treasure in your own home?

Double Victoria Weaving Pattern

If you were to walk into our office right now you would see three chairs, all identical in build, but with three very different finishing styles.  They also have three different weaving styles on the seats.  One has a traditional '6 way' weave in the usual natural cane.  You can see what a '6 way' weave looks like in the left picture.  Another of the three chairs has the traditional '6 way' weave but there are some black painted strands woven in on the diagonals.  This gives the chair such an unusual look.

The third chair we did a completely different weave.  It is so unusual, I don't think we have done it a single time for a customer!  This weave is called a 'Double Victoria' and can be seen in the right photo.  This 'Double Victoria' doesn't create all the little octagons in the weaving but instead creates little squares filled with Xs.  I really like this different woven pattern and am hoping someone walks in, sees the chairs and decides to have their entire set woven that way!


Soon, we will also have a wall covered with small examples of each of the weaving patters that we can do.  We are about halfway done with that project so you can expect to see more posts about that soon!

Two Different Woven Seats On The Same Chair!

We do all kinds of weaving work here at the shop.  Sometimes a chair comes to us with one weave, but the chair's owner wants to change it to a different weave.  In this case, it was entirely possible for us to make the change.  Both the old and the new styles were fastened onto the same kind of frame, so once the old was removed, there was nothing hindering us from switching styles.

The chair came in with a Fibre Rush seat woven in an X pattern.  This is a very common style you can see on a lot of chairs.  Fibre Rush is the most in-expensive way of doing it, as the material is essentially twisted paper.  There are much more expensive (and therefore also more durable) materials that can be used in this same weaving pattern, such as Seagrass Rush, Twisted Seagrass, Wheat Wrapped Rush and Cattail, with Cattail being  by far the most expensive as it is twisted by hand.  Cattail also happens to be by far the nicest!

The chair's owner decided to go with a Flat Reed woven in a herringbone pattern.  One cool thing about how this particular chair was done,  can you tell the flat reed is not all the same size?  It gives this chair a really neat variegated look which isn't as commonly seen.   Now, they could have gone with a slightly more 'fancy' Wood Splint for this same weave, which would show a wood grain throughout.  But this 'fancy' material also has a fancy price, so most people go with the Flat Reed.

Do you like the new weave material and pattern better or the old weave material and pattern?  Do you have a chair like this at home just begging for some TLC?  Bring it to us!

Sample Squares of Woven Patterns

Our Furniture Weaver is working on an interesting project just lately.  She is making sample squares of different weaves to hang on our wall in the office.  This way, when you come visit us, you can see an assortment of styles which we can put to use on your furniture.  So far she has two completed, and two almost completed, each uses a different material, woven in a different pattern.  This is just the beginning, we will have so many to show by the time this project is done!