Sun Room Settee Gets a New Seat

 This lovely settee brings to mind porches in summer and sipping iced tea.  Or maybe a sun room and lemonade! Unfortunately years of sitting on it had weakened the wicker seat.  It was still together, but one by one the strands were breaking so it was only a matter of time until someone sat on it and fell through.   It was brought to us as a preventative measure, so that no guests would have to suffer the embarrassment of breaking their hostess's furniture!

 We came up with a simple solution which would not require a complete re-weaving of the seat (which would have been cost preventative and very time consuming).   Instead of re weaving,  we created a hoop in the same shape as the seat itself.  Onto this hoop supports were fastened across in key areas, and then our sturdiest cane was used to weave a grid.  This hoop was then 'sewn' to the settee's original seat frame.

In the photo below you can see the grid we wove, and the original spiral patterned wicker still underneath.   Pretty neat solution right?  The owner of the settee has a cushion which sits on top, so the grid will be hidden.  This cushion was what allowed us to add structural support to the seat, without having to follow  the original weaving style.

Do you have a unique furniture problem that you need help finding a solution to?  Bring it to us, we would love to help!

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!