First project of the year

The last straw broke on this little chair over the holidays. It had been waiting so long for an upgrade it didn’t take much for the seat to give way. Fortunately no gravy was spilled.

Taking the old rush weave away was really interesting if very dusty. You can see that the rushes were twisted in small sections around the woodwork, and left flat inside.

And here we have the flowers to try and identify the species. One candidate is many-headed woodrush. Though that only grows to 40 cms so I’m still searching.

Chair weaver knots. They’re not really knots but a sort of clever twist.

I spent several days hand sanding all the old dark varnish away. A coat of Renaissance wax brings out all the lovely colours of this Victorian chair.

I found a place online that sells reels of reel rush. Pre twisted rush which must be soaked before use and then drained and left for a little while before work begins. The old way to secure the first length is with string, not tacks. The chair had no tacks holding the old rushes in place. Here we go with the help of a couple of videos on YouTube.

Having got this far I realised I’d made a couple of mistakes and had to go back. I spent the next four hours checking every corner as I went, and hoping my one kilo of reel rush really was enough for this size chair seat. As I came closer to the strings, I snipped them away, as the weave was holding everything in place. The clip hold the loose end in place while I take a new length of rush from the coil. My knots were large and ugly but I managed to hide them all inside the weaving. I padded the little gaps between upper and lower sides of the seat with rush clippings, just as the original seat weaver had done.

One happy chair. Next time I would rather try the traditional method of twisting my own rush, as the pre twisted rush is an absolute pain when it starts to tangle itself into curly knots. But overall I’m very pleased with my first try at this ancient old craft. The chair is now extremely comfortable, and smells of summer!