Chair caning, a challenging antique art
By Caitlyn Kelleher
All it took was one class at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post and Penny Wilkinson was hooked on chair caning.

Wilkinson, 71, started this hobby about 20 years ago and has built up her technique through trail and error.

"It's a challenge," she said. "I really try to dress the chair up so when you look at it it's beautiful."

Chair caning is the method of weaving reed and fiber rush through a wooden chair to create a seat and a back. The woven method was introduced into English furniture during the late 1600s. During that time the weaving had got tighter and more decorative than the original styles. Wilkinson said she has studied a variety of methods that include blind caning, in which the material is not tied to the chair; Danish caning, which is done with wider pieces of reed; and pressed caning, which is a flatter method then the others.

"Chairs have character," she said. "You really have to find the character."

The chair's character will determine how long she will work at a time.

"I may start at eight in the morning and quit after the news, only stopping to eat," she said. "It depends on if you get interested in a chair."

Wilkinson either picks up chairs from antique stores or other sales or she takes chairs that people want to have repaired. Recently she has finished a large rocking chair with a blind cane and she is finishing up decorative chair.

Unless the chair is part of an existing set, Wilkinson said she does not focus on the pattern of the cane that is already in the chair as she rehabs it.

"I have my own way of caning," she said.

Wilkinson said the hobby gives her something to focus on and something to do despite the arthritis in her hands. She works on about 140 chairs -most of them rockers - a year to keep her hobby as a business.

"It's expensive. This is a none profit organization," she said jokingly.

The materials costs about $25 a rank and a rank is good for about 2.5 chairs.

It simply took the class at the VFW to make Wilkinson decide she wanted to work on the chairs.

"I used to bring the hardest chairs I could find," she said.

But, that wasn't her first exposure to the process of caning. Her mother used to have a lot of caned chairs in the house.

Chair caning is the method of weaving reed and fiber rush through a wooden chair to create a seat and a back. The woven method was introduced into English furniture during the late 1600s. During that time the weaving had got tighter and more decorative than the original styles. Penny Wilkinson, 71, works on about 140 chairs a year.

"We used to go out to Shirley, to Mrs. Hood, and she would do them," Wilkinson said.

Years later, she made her mother some chairs when she was starting to learn the technique. Wilkinson has also kept some of the chairs for herself.

-  -

Caitlyn Kelleher can be reached at (978) 827-3386, ext. 15, or e-mail: caitlynkelleher@ aol.com