Cane chairs are not only beautiful but they evoke a sense of history and craftsmanship. There are two kinds of cane seats--those woven by hand with long strands of thin cane and those made of a machine-woven cane sheet. Even if all the original cane is gone from a chair, one tell which type of seat it had. If there is a narrow groove around the seat frame, the chair had machine-woven cane. For years cane chairs were made in the factories but sent out to weavers who would weave the cane seats and backs by hand. Eventually, machines began to do the weaving mechanically.
Pre-woven cane makes re-caning a chair a much simpler process, but it still takes patience and a steady hand to bring old cane chairs back to life. In Wood Refinishing, we learnhow to install both types of cane. We learn a basic 6-step weave for hand caining of chairs, we also learn installation of a factory weave.
