How to restore a chair wickerwork | SWR Craftsmanship

The seat of a chair can be made of many materials. One of the traditionally most popular, beautiful and high quality is the rattan weave. It is made from a natural material, the cane of the rattan palm, and is as handcrafted today as it was a hundred years ago. Although you can also buy ready-made wickerwork, especially for high-quality antique chairs, the wickerwork in the chair seat must be pulled in thread by thread.
Felicitas Zimehl is a chair weaver by passion and profession. She loves chairs, and in her chair workshop in Ingelheim, she restores everything from Thonet cantilever chairs to antique Biedermeier pieces of furniture that customers hold dear. The price for the work depends on the time required, and that is determined by the number of holes through which the chair weave has to be pulled.
The chair weaver shows us how a so-called Viennese weave is made. Among the many different patterns that can be woven from rattan, this variant with its characteristic octagonal shape is the only one suitable for sitting because of its high stability. Unlike some of its counterparts, it attaches the weave to the chair without glue. She knots the individual threads under the seat in the traditional way. This method is a little more laborious, but it protects the piece of furniture, because later repairs do not need to drill glue out of the holes.