D is the completed panel.
Inserts of cane webbing may be utilized on pieces of furniture other than seats. These inserts could be used on every article illustrated in Chapters I and II, with similar pleasing effects, and with less labor. However, there is an obvious element in hand caning which naturally and logically gives it precedence over the inserted cane.
CHAPTER V
Rush Seating
Rush seating, employing either genuine rush or substitutes, may be done to good advantage and with excellent results in manual training shops. No equipment is needed to maintain such work. The addition of a woven seat to a chair or stool constructed in the shops will necessarily employ a new, interesting medium in conjunction with woodwork; and materially increase the pupils’ knowledge of materials and possible combinations. And, as with caning, the resultant interest in the work at hand more than justifies its introduction in manual training shops. Rush seating employs a very simple weave. Different materials employed in weaving naturally require different degrees of skill, and the difficulties encountered are those resulting from handling materials and not because of the complexity of the weave. One may very readily undertake the rushing of ordinary seat frames after a study of printed directions and illustrations. It should be understood at the outset that, in discussing rush seating, materials other than genuine rush are included in the term.
Historical.—In the British Museum in London is a seat of curious shape of Egyptian manufacture, which, it is estimated, was made previous to 4000 B.C. A small amount of rush still clings to the seat frame. The relative date of the construction and weaving of the chair seat would indicate that rush seating is by no means a modern art, altho at present rush is extensively employed in furniture.
The use of rush in England dates no earlier than 1720. Several types of chairs were made there between that date and 1870. In France rush was used extensively in the seating of furniture of Normandy and Brittany about 1750. Flanders produced rush seated chairs at an early date, and many were constructed in this country in early colonial days, prior to 1776, as well as later. Such chairs were undoubtedly patterned after those brought over from Holland, France, and England to the early settlements in America both before and after the Revolutionary War.
FIG. 36. ADAPTATION OF LADDER BACK CHAIR.