Would you like to get a taste of the craft of chair caning? You can! Since it’s not possible to cane an entire chair in two hours, during this workshop you will create a small frame in colours of your choice. You will work with a blunt needle and thread on a wooden frame. You can choose from a wide palette of colours to design your own woven frame. Several examples of possible patterns will be available, but you are of course also free to create your own design.

You will go home with a handmade piece of art that you can hang on the wall or display anywhere you like.

Chair caning is handcraft, and it takes a lot of time, even for a traditional chair caner. What makes the caning technique so special is that a single thread, or a strip of rattan in traditional caning, is not strong on its own. The strength of the seat emerges through the weaving of the pattern during the caning process. That remains remarkable every single time a new chair is woven.

Caning, rush seating, and weaving are practices that Francine Becker approaches in her own distinctive way as de amsterdamse stoelenmatter. She gives chairs new seats using only recycled materials such as discarded T-shirts and jersey fitted sheets, old festival banners, and second-hand Zpagetti yarn from Hooked, made from leftover materials from the fashion and textile industry. This results in colourful chair seats with a wide variety of patterns. She also rescues chairs from the street. Chairs with rattan or rush seats are often discarded because re-caning or re-rushing can be expensive. Francine gives these chairs a new life by caning and weaving them in a style that suits the interior of her clients.