When people watch Diana Clark demonstrate her craft at heritage festivals, they have two questions.
“The first question is always ‘How long does it take you to do that?’” she said. “The next is, ‘How much do you charge to do it?’”
What Diana does is replace broken cane seats on chairs and stools by re-caning them in the traditional way, weaving thin strips of rattan into a pattern. It’s very meticulous work, and very time consuming.
“And it’s not cheap,” she adds.
Diana was demonstrating seat caning in the dog-trot cabin at the Henry County Museum’s Old Settler’s Day on Sept. 23 in Clinton. She will be at Pioneer Heritage Days at the Truman Visitor Center in Warsaw on Oct. 21.
Because she lives in rural Missouri, Diana doesn’t charge as much as a seat caner might charge in an urban area, she said. She always has chairs waiting for her attention in her home workshop in Glasgow, Mo. Customers come to her through referral or by picking up one of her business cards when she demonstrates seat caning at heritage festivals.
“It’s a dying craft,” she said.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Diana got into seat caning in 1975, she said, after she was cleaning out her grandmother’s house after her grandmother passed away. In the attic, Diana found old chairs that she thought looked neat. The only problem: they didn’t have any seats. So she signed up for class at the local community college in seat caning, and replaced the seats herself.
Seat caning is the craft of weaving rattan cane or rattan peel on a piece of furniture, to make a back or seat. Rattan is a material made from a fibrous tropical plant, similar to bamboo, is lightweight, durable and flexible, and has a structure similar to human bones, so can be made into artificial bones.
Diana buys the material cut ready to use, she said, pre-soaks it and works with the cane wet. As it dries, it tightens, which means she doesn’t have to pull it tight, so it’s not hard on her hands.
Diana said not many places teach seat caning anymore. She used to teach it at craft camps in northern Missouri, she said, but her students were usually people who just wanted to replace one chair seat. She has lived in Missouri for 32 years, and said she has met only one other person in central Missouri who does caning as a business. She calls hers “Sit-a-While Seat Weaving.”
Diane also weaves seats using fiber rush, flat reed and shaker tape. Fiber rush is made of paper and resembles twisted bull rushes. Flat reed is large, machine-cut rattan, flat on both sides, like strips of thin wood, that you often see in basket-making kits. Shaker tape is a nubby fabric tape that comes in colors, and can be woven in contrasting colors to make the traditional checker-board patterned chair seat.
Diana said her largest re-caning project was a settee made in Argentina. The job was commissioned by a couple from New Mexico she met at Silver Dollar City, where she was demonstrating seat-caning three summers ago. They dropped the settee by her house on the way through the area, Diana said, and she re-caned it and shipped it back to them.
Diana also uses pine needles to weave baskets, a craft she learned four years ago at a camp where she teaches seat-caning. Her sister in Delaware sends her a big box of pine needles, Diana said, which are two to four inches longer than the pine needles in this area.
“It lasts me about a year,” Diana said. “The biggest I make are eight inches around. The process is similar to making sweetgrass baskets, like they do in North Carolina.”
She sees a lot of chairs with broken cane seats, she said.
“Usually by the time they bring it to me, I have to redo the whole seat,” she said. “If they would bring it in when they first see a broken strand, it would be more of a repair than a replacement.”
Why Diana likes about the process:
“I find it relaxing once you learn the steps,” she said of caning. “It’s an over and over thing. I also like the fact that it’s a heritage craft that people are still interested in today. I like that it keeps the craft going, keeps the history going.”
Diana was demonstrating seat caning in one side of the dog-trot log cabin at Old Settler’s Day, which brought more than a hundred people to the Henry County Museum Homestead. Other crafters in period costume demonstrated spinning, weaving, rug-making, tatting and bobbin-lace making.
On the grounds, children bobbed for apples tied to strings, painted pumpkins next to the mule barn and turned the rope-making machine by hand. In the schoolhouse, they learned to weave potholders on a small frame, which they took home, along with their pumpkins and jumprope they had made.
The Henry County Cattlemen’s Association donated their time and grills to cook burgers and brats in the parking lot, while the Shortleaf Band from Springfield played traditional Ozark music on mandolin, fiddle and guitar. Sam Van Sant set up his chuck wagon and offered samples of cast-iron cooking. Author D.L. Rogers entertained the crowds with tales of life on the Oregon Trail.
The free event is an annual living history day held by the Henry County Historical Society in the fall.
Diana Clark is a charter member of The Seatweavers Guild, Inc. For more information, go to wickerwoman.com.
