We meet one of Yorkshire's last cane seat weavers who is desperate to pass her knowledge on to others

“Caning is on the ‘red list’ of at risk artisan crafts a list drawn up by the Heritage Craft Association,” explains Christine.

“It has extinct crafts on it such as cricket ball making and lacrosse stick making. There are lots of things on the lists which are said to be sustainable - maybe if we can get enough people to take them up.

"There are so many antique chairs out there that need their cane seats replacing – I have a waiting list of at least four or five months, but it is time consuming and the younger generation seem to want things instantly and there is nothing instant about caning and so I find that most of the people who come to my weekly classes are retired.

"Also they don’t seem to teach children to make things in school any more – they teach them to design things but not make them.

“We have a different way of living now. If people have an old chair that needs a new seat and they don’t know who can do it they take it to the tip or get it upholstered, which is such a shame as it is so well made and really needs to be repaired and restored to the way it was meant to be, we just need more people to be able to do it.”

Always quite creative Christine taught herself to seat weave more than 45 years ago when she was working in an antiques shop in the Cotswolds.

"The owner of the shop used to bring things back and get me to polish them up or mend them one day he brought a came char and he said ‘can you fix this?’ I said ‘of course i can’ even though I had never done it before.

"I went to library and got a book about caning and that’s where it started, although the first chair I did took me hours and hours and hours and I did wonder is this for me - but I am pretty determined and I stuck at it,” says Christine, who is also a keen embroiderer and wood turner.

"I initially did it for myself and the boss and then started doing it professionally and I’ve been doing it for 47 years.”

As well as caning Christine, who returned to Yorkshire in 1988, does rushwork, although due to a shortage of people picking the rushes they are hard to come by.

"I went on a course to do that - an actual person showing you how to do something is far better than trying to teach yourself from a book,” she says

"Traditional rush weaving uses the common bulrush (Scirpus lacustris) which grows best in fast running water, for example the River Thames. It is cut in August, dried for two to three weeks and store them in the dark, then soaked again before use.

"The rushes are used in pairs, tip to butt, twisted together and woven around each corner of the seat to produce a pattern rather like an envelope.

"We used to travel down to Wantage to buy them from a chap who cut them out of the Thames but he has sadly died and there are very few people who actually cut the common bulrush.

"We have even travelled to Bedford to get them but its a long way to go. They do grow in Yorkshire but we don't know anyone here who cuts them.”

Christine now uses cane, rush, seagrass and Danish cord. Rattan used for chair caning is a climbing plant grown, processed and imported from Indonesia.

“Some chairs have a mixture of cane and upholstery so I did a City and Guilds course in upholstery and went on to teach upholstery at Askham Bryan college at their Pickering branch." She now holds caning workshops and has even trained a blind person to cane,

Seat Weaving covers different materials, techniques and patterns. “Most people want the standard pattern which is the one you find in 17th Century chairs although you can do some really fancy patterns.

“Cane furniture was introduced to England in the 17th Century when Charles II was given a chair imported by the East India Company and that started the fashion,” explains Christine. But the actual origins of caning are not known but Christine says there was a caned item found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

“It became popular in England just after the Great Fire of London when lots of furniture was destroyed, They decided that caned furniture was more hygienic as it didn’t harbour pests like upholstery did.

"Nobody washed in those days and a lot of the upholstered furniture as made from horse hair.”

Christine explains that traditional caning consists of threading cane through holes in the chair frame. She says that the most time consuming chairs are ones with curved panels blind holes and conjoined holes where the seat and back panels share the same holes, such as the Library chair.

While repairing a piece of furniture normally requires her to use existing hole she has been known to get her drill out from time to time.

Modern caning uses ready woven sheet cane fixed in a groove cut into the seat rails, .

“My customers include furniture restorers, country estates, people with heirlooms and those with recently acquired pieces and come from as far afield as Manchester and Keswick. I have even done a chair that used to belong to Napolean.”

But she says she is getting more midcentury caned furniture to repair.

“I used to mainly get Victorian furniture or earlier to restore but there isn’t so much of that now. Habitat did a range of tubular steel dining chairs in the sixties and seventies and they are now coming along to be recaned. But that is normally the sheet cane you buy in a role,” says Christine.

“Danish cord is something that we use as well that goes onto Danish teak chairs – again midcentury – they are wearing out as well.”

A small bedroom chair would take Christine six to right hours to cane, although she has done settees and beds with double cane that can take two or three weeks. On average she does two chairs a week but that can be less if the piece is bigger.

When we speak she is working on one of her trickiest pieces to date.

"I've got something on the go at the moment that's a bit of a challenge. It's a Planter’s Chair which is very wide and long. But probably the most challenging things are headboards for beds because you have to reach round them.”

It doesn't seem there is much that Christine can’t cane, she has even done and intricate design on a screen to go round their electricity metre box at her home near Malton which she taught herself from an old book written in 1917.

She says while she would like to do more decorative caning there just isn't the demand for it, although she would like to experiment with making cane or seagrass lampshades. The standard pattern is the strongest and that's why it is used for chairs that are load bearing.

"It has to be fit for purpose," she says. “People are heavier than they used to be so I try to put the biggest cane I can in if it’s a seat.

“Seat weaving can be a relaxing and enjoyable occupation. Nimble fingers are an asset, as is a certain amount of determination.”

christine-addley.co.uk