How To Restore A Hand Woven Cane Chair Seat

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FVYVKHC

This is one of the main reasons why the blog has been a little bit quiet for the last few months, I've been doing a lot of general sorting out here at FG headquarters and one of the projects I've been itching to do was a makeover of the DIY booklet that we include in all of our Hand Cane Seat Kits. Well here it is - finished!

It had to be done, all of the paperwork and images that have accumulated over the past 20 years were starting to get overwhelming, it's still going to take me a long time to sort them out properly, but at least I've made a start. This is the first DIY instruction booklet makeover, more are in the pipeline already. If you're interested have a look at our Facebook page for more updates.

Fashion. From Georgian to 60's...and back again!

I was recently made painfully aware that next year will be the 20th anniversary of the "birth" of my trading name - Former Glory. Where did all that time go? Thinking about the range of furniture in the workshop these days and looking back, it's amazing how fashion has changed peoples preferences over so few years in relative terms.

In the beginning it was mainly Victorian and Georgian furniture that came in for restoration. Spoonback chairs and heavily carved walnut, little barley twisted tables and anything made from rosewood with ornate inlay and mirrors. Pretty, practical, occasionally OTT and to be honest sometimes huge, heavy things that were difficult to move and consequently gave me problems with my sacroiliac joint that I still suffer from today.

After about ten years it became more about Arts and Crafts. William Morris, Godwin, Macintosh etc. The prices of anything from this design period went through the roof and people realised that it made good economic sense to keep their Art furniture in good order. We saw plenty from this period, probably because lots of it had hand woven seating and labour intensive oil and wax finishes that need attention periodically.

Nobody wanted "modern" back then. I remember distinctly being lambasted for having a soft spot for this practical simplicity of Danish mid 20th century design and worse still being raucously laughed at for lusting after the slightly imperfect hand made beauty of rush seated country chairs.

But then more recently the world changed again. Modernist designs were "in". The Bauhaus, Danish and progressive designs, all previously largely unloved and out of favour, were finding their way to our workshop. I've lost count of how many "Cesca" chair seats we've replaced, (named 'Cesca after Francesca, daughter of the designer) and if I had £1 for every Danish chair we've seen........well!

Finally a proper comfort zone has arrived for me.

So.....where next? Shall we go around in a big circle and find a renewed interest in the classic lines of the Regency period, or will it be a yearning for the decorative - a return to Victoriana?

Well that's anybody's guess, but my money is on anything original, comfortable to use, beautifully made, practical and SMALL. All power to the independent makers of this World, your time has come!

What say you?

What is it Winter already? Time to look at old photos then.

Strange times. This week the weather has swung from mosquito ridden damp warmth, to very heavy rain, then sunshine followed by chilly, cloud free nights. I'm obviously not the only one who's confused by this weird weather. These are emerging daffodils in our garden today.

And this is a beautiful flower that has decided that October is the month to shine.

All so very topsy turvy. The rhododendron hedge was in flower at the end of last month for the second time this year and oddest of all, a white rhododendron flowered white in the Spring and then purple in the Autumn. Peculiar.

However, the unpredictable weather is a perfect excuse for getting all of the admin and other boring "housekeeping" duties in order. It was while I was in the process of filing old photos that I came upon these very old images of work I'd completely forgotten about. Work that was done at a time when I did more of the heavier restoration....and had more space! Here's a "before" photo of a well worn piece.

We still have this old shopfitting cabinet, it's perfect for holding all of the bits and pieces you need to use every day. Each drawer is familiar to me, I know exactly what is in each one without even looking. It still looks moreorless the same, even though I've used it everyday for about 10 years, but here was the photo I took immediately after it was finished.

I don't care where I end up, or what I end up doing in the future, this cabinet goes with me!

Spindle back chairs

This week I have been consumed working on a set of old spindle back dining chairs. You could say that they had seen better days, all four were "rocky", every joint either loose or apart. One had a broken back rail and another was missing two of it's spindles. A job like this seems straightforward and normally it wouldn't be too bad, just very time consuming. But when woodworm are involved, you never know how much their infestation will affect the work.

It didn''t take long for me to realise that the worms had been in residence for quite a long time!

From the outside there are not too many holes, you'd think that it wasn't too bad - until you see the inside of the wood - just a honeycomb is left! So this leads you on to check all areas around the wormy wood just in case more of the frame is affected and so you end up chasing the damage further and further, making the workload bigger and bigger!

This is the replacement rail in progress.

First the new rail was "blocked out" and then roughly hewn to shape.

Then the slightly oval ends were turned on the lathe.

The remains of the honeycomb of wood need to be taken out carefully before the chair can be put together again!

So eventually number one of four is back together and we start on number two with the missing spindles.

Two new copies made from old wood. For once I really enjoyed making these because we've got a new toy now, an electronic Vernier gauge and it is brilliant! It's so much more accurate than the old manual ones.

Then the chair had to come apart so that I could fit them, easier said than done! It's guaranteed that there will always be one joint that will not come apart no matter what! Anyway about two hours later I could get on with the fitting and colour matching.

Luckily the other two frames only needed to be reglued. So after an overnight rest....

 

........all that needs to be done is the easy bit, to put some rush on those seats!

Out of Africa

A very unusual patient! This chair has just arrived in the workshop.

It's an African chieftain chair and both arm uprights have this same head carved on the top.....he looks a bit grumpy! The weave on the seat is something very different, it is a fairly standard close weave in a fine cord but it is finished off with a crocheted edge. That will take me back to my childhood, I haven't done any crocheting for years, but I'll enjoy it - memories of my Grandmother teaching me when I was 7 or so.

Chapel chair countdown

Thirty five finished........only nineteen more to do. Here are the finished ones so far:

 

My hands are beginning to ache now, but then that's probably as much due to the cold and damp as the rush weaving. I said in a much earlier post that these chairs come from a very special location.....well if you were watching Country Tracks on BBC this morning as I was, then you will have seen this beautiful place!?! http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00k143b/Country_Tracks_Cornwall_Coast/

I'm also pushing ahead with the Cassina chairs, slowly and laboriously, it's the only way to do them.

This weaving is also hard on the hands, so I'm doing myself no favours I guess! 

Mouldy bottoms!

We know what we'll be doing for the next three months......... It all started a little while ago with a phone call from the National Trust. "We have a problem with rush seats on the chairs in a chapel, it's so damp that the rush gets mouldy and mildewy then it goes soft and the coils start to break....any idea what we can do?"

That's the trouble with natural materials and especially rush and seagrass seats, when they get damp and stay damp, mould and mildew have a field day feeding off the coiled rushes and the internal packing. It doesn't take long to happen and there's no quick fix. The last thing you need is for a member of the congregation to sit on a mouldy old chair seat in their "Sunday best".

We suggested using paper fibre instead, it looks the same as rush but it won't hold the moisture in the same way and is much less likely to succumb to mould. So a decision was made, yes 40 chair seats would be replaced with paper.

The van turned up today full of little chapel chairs - all 54 of them.

Yes, I think that will keep me out of trouble for a while, well until Easter at least.

From a Louis XVI window seat to a broken country chair!

I think it's what I love the most about my job, you never know what will walk through the workshop door. For example this week, firstly a very nice lady arrived with this:

A lovely 19th century French walnut window seat with beautiful carving. But what made it even more interesting for us was the history. We were chatting about how pretty it is, it's likely age and the fact that whilst it is French and Louis XVI in design, it is probably a 19th century piece. The owner said she had an inventory of furniture and when she went home, she would look to see if the stool was on the list.

About two hours later an e-mail arrived from the owner, the stool was on the list described as French 19th century walnut and in 1970 was valued at the princely sum of £35! The seat will be replaced once we have repaired one rail which has split - it is a stunning piece of furniture.

And then the next day another lady arrived with this:

These are the remains of an oak dining chair! Again it was the story behind the chair that was interesting. It is one of a set and unfortunately when the owner moved from the US to England, this one chair arrived in pieces from the shippers - that was 30 years ago. Goodness only knows what happened to it in transit, all four stretchers are missing and all but one of the seat rails are broken. It will take us some time to make the missing pieces, but it will be worth it - at least the dining set will be complete again.

Thursday catch up.

It's lovely to have visitors and be a tourist in your own area for a few days. I can't remember the last time we visited Swanage to just wander around, look at shops and eat fish and chips, but that was what we did last Saturday and it was bliss, even the weather was good.

However, there's always seems to be a price to pay for any fun, so this week we're trying to catch up. Nothing exciting, just more of the same but it is hard work. The Wegner wishbones are getting done one by one, half a seat a day, that's quite enough effort I can tell you! It's proper aerobic exercise without the need for any rowing or running machines.

In between there's more cane panelling to do, some to be tinted and others left "au naturel".

There was also quite a bit of restoration woodworking that had been put off for too long, so yesterday I decided to get on with it with a vengeance. First there was a lovely arts and crafts chair that needed a new front seat rail and stretcher, both had broken. So we found an old seat rail in our "butchered wood" store and made a new front stretcher out of an old piece of beech. The stretcher had to be beaten up a bit and coloured to make it match in with the rest of the frame - this is the result.

Just need to put a new seat on it now. The other woodworking job was to make a new front rail for a drop in seat pad that had moreorless disintegrated.

This is one of a set of three, luckily the other frames are fine. So now we can re-rush this lot too! All pretty boring stuff, I'm still waiting for some spare time to go back to working on the papier mache inlaid chair, but it never seems to happen.

No 1 son's project.......

We're not the only people in the household with projects. No 1 son has a passion for restoration too, except his projects are somewhat larger than ours, usually cars or buildings! I'm sure it's our own fault for indulging his passion for model cars and lego when he was a tot.

Well here it is.........

It's been several weeks of very hard labour for him, but what a result! It was a non-runner with endless mechanical and bodywork problems, but he has persevered and now it is fully roadworthy and has passed the MOT test. It still needs a front end re-paint, but that's non-essential cosmetic work as far as he's concerned and will have to wait until more funds are available. I heard it running this morning.....mmmmmm, a Rover V8, just like a quietly purring big cat. We're very proud of his achievement, this is the third car he's either restored or rebuilt. Well done son!!!

Meanwhile we're plodding on - remember the chair frame that needed refinishing last week? Well here it is now waiting for the cane to be replaced.

I also spent some time over the weekend making a couple more footstool frames from scratch using some hazel from our garden and some recycled bits and pieces that we've gathered together over the years.

We're going to put a really fancy top on this one to contrast with the simplicity of the frame. The second of these frames is in pieces in the background of the photo, one of the legs has two branches and looks like a pair of jeans to me, so it's been christened the "Denims" stool!

Back to the mundane for today though, more "Habitat" cane panel seats.......

If you want to have a look at the work of loads of other really talented craftspeople, then pay a visit to Wendy's blog here, She showcases other crafty bloggers skills every Monday - pay her a visit!

An Art Deco Bergere and Mr Wegner....again.

I feel like Forrest Gump's Mom saying it, but it is true that in our line of work "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get"! This week so far we span from 1900 to 1970, high Victorian to sleek modernist with a bit of bling in between. Firstly on Monday this arrived......

A high Art Deco, faux painted Walnut, blind sunset cane backed bergere sofa. It weighs a ton! For now we will just be replacing the arm panels, but first of all I've got to find a way of re-gluing one of the joints without disturbing the upholstery - could be interesting.

Then there is this....

Another one!! Hans Wegner's Wishbone chair. This ones seat has been half eaten and stropped by the cat.

Finally a fiddly one....

It's a low bergere armchair. The cane in the back and arms has to be replaced and whilst we're at it, the customer has asked us to "give the frame a bit of a clean". Easier said than done when the upholstery is fairly new, hence the parcel tape and plastic covering every square inch of fabric! I'll post pictures of the revived woodwork soon.

I'm also hoping to return to the black lacquer chair this week to do more repair work, but we'll see if time permits. Our next and last show of the year at Larmer Tree Gardens is just over two weeks away, so we will have to make time to produce some new pieces for that as well.

Friday is for finishing things.

Another Friday, where does all the time go!? Everything is taking longer than expected, there are seized in screws where there should be easy to remove nails - the finish that I thought was french polish isn't so it needs to be stripped - the joints that needed re-gluing and looked like they would fall apart actually have hidden nails in them....etc.....grrrr!

On a happier note, the Mouseman footstool and the French "shabby chic" chairs are finished, hurrah! The canework on the chairs was so fine, it took forever. Normally an English chair will have about 9-10 drilled frame holes per 6" around the perimeter of the seat, which means that the guage of the weaving is quite broad, however, these French chairs had 15/16 holes per 6", so as you can guess the guage is much tighter and it takes a lot longer to do.

The rest of today will be spent putting cane panels into "Habitat" seat frames, because for whatever reason, we've had over a dozen arrive this week - things do seem to go in phases. We're also trying to get ahead of ourselves for the show at Stock Gaylard later this month. So far we have prepared three more footstools to work on and I have dyed a batch of cane for some more baskets. Perhaps next week will be a bit easier.....

The Mouseman footstool is nearly finished!

Had an inspiring weekend....so I thought I'd make the most of it and work on the lovely little Mouseman footstool. First of all I removed the old leather seat straps that were broken...

then some old leather had to be aged to match the 90 years of wear and tear...

The new bare strips were cut and woven into place....

and finally, the new straps were antiqued to match the originals....

I'm quite pleased so far, tomorrow the hide feed will have been absorbed into the old leather and I should be able to buff the whole top, then I'll be able to do the final distressing to the new straps.

Why not pop over to Wendy's handmade Monday to see what everyone else has been doing this week?

A "Mouseman" footstool

I think most people have heard of the "Mouseman", or to give him his proper name, Robert Thompson "The Mouseman of Kilburn". He was a prolific maker of English Oak furniture in the 1930's who preferred to stick to traditional methods and tools to produce his designs. His major influence was medieval simplicity, a single worker could make one piece in its entirety - no production line. As a result, each piece is unique with a texture all of its own. Robert Thompson started to mark his work with a carved mouse in the 1920's, apparently to begin with the mouse even had carved front legs, but as these broke off a little too easily, the mouse was redesigned and this is one way that collectors of his furniture can date a piece. The company still exists today, they have a website here:

http://www.robertthompsons.co.uk/

Well........ look what came to our workshop on Friday afternoon..........

It's lovely! The little mouse's face is so well carved and the oak has a really soft tactile finish, even though you can see the marks of the hand tools clearly, every surface is smooth to the touch. The owner remembers it from when he was a very small boy and it wasn't new then, so we estimate this is a very early stool from the 1930's. He loves it and would never part with it because the little mouse brings back so many memories for him, it's part of his family.

All we need to do is to replace five of the leather seat strips, they have broken - the weaving itself is not a difficult thing to do, the hardest part will be cutting and aging the new leather strips to match the old ones! A little job for tomorrow.

Shabby chic!

As a restorer I spend the vast majority of my time cleaning up, revitalising or replacing an original finish. It's not every day that I'm asked to paint something!

A few weeks ago two chairs arrived, they looked like this.

Now normally I would expct to remove the gold paint, re-gesso and re-gild the frames, but just for a change my client wants me to remove the finish and paint them to look like they have always been painted, ie distressed shabby chic! He wants to use them in a display.

So first they were soda blasted, the only way to remove the old finish without damaging the incrediby fine carving. The process was so gentle that it even stripped the paint from the canework in the back without damaging it.

Then they were painted in Farrow & Ball paint.

Two coats of paint later, they were antiqued to bring out the depth of the carving and then some of the highlights in the paintwork were rubbed through to give the look of a hundred years use.

Just have to recane the seats now. I'll post a picture of both when they're finished. I'm realy enjoying myself!

Pot handles, Papier Mache and a Fox!

I can't believe it, I've reached my 200th post and had over 9300 page views. Many thanks to you all for your support, I hope you have managed to find something useful or interesting in my random ramblings!

So what's new? Last week was a busy one, but something a little bit different did come into the workshop to break up the monotony of rush work - this little silver pot handle wrap.

It's a little hand hammered tea pot with a very pretty border around the lid and top, so a fine, intricate handle weave was needed I thought to do justice to the delicate detail. It's a variation of a design used on a lot of the Liberty Tudric metalwork designed by Archibald knox, except this handle wrap has been re-woven in 1.6mm wide cane instead of 3.0mm, so it took a bit longer than usual!

The other unusual thing that arrived this week was this amazing lacquered and inlaid papier mache chair.

It needs a lot of work which should be started next month, but I couldn't help myself, I just HAD to see how it would look by cleaning just a little bit....

Ooooh it's going to be a treat working on this one! Look at how the mother of pearl starts to shine with a little bit of cleaning.

And lastly at the weekend we saw this very sorry sight.

This young and incredibly skinny fox was wandering around the garden in broad daylight eating the bird food - he must be starving. He was so weak that he didn't even try to run away when he saw us.