My parents bought this chair new in about 1956 (I was born in 1956) so I grew up with it. 27 years later, after much use and moving house several times and moving country once, the joints were badly damaged and some of the strands were broken, and it ended up under the house in the open air. Feeling sentimental and connected I was given it by my parents and it followed me around for another ten years or so, added to my ‘one day I will fix that’ pile of future furniture repair projects. (there are still several chairs in that pile). At last I despaired of doing it myself and gave the frame to a carpenter to repair, and then to a chair upholsterer to re-weave. We used it for another 10 years, but the restoration had been really badly done, the cord was breaking and joints had broken again, so in 2015 I took it apart again and restored it myself. On and off it has taken about a year. I might post the frame repair separately. I decided that it was better to reveal the full shimmering pellucid figure and detail of the danish oak rather than preserve the patina that had built up over the years, so I sanded it down to a more or less fresh surface, and oiled it with Tung oil. I am very happy with the result. For the weaving, I had kept a roll of original danish 3 ply paper cord for about 30 years ready for any restoration. It was nominally an eighth of an inch but actually a bit thinner, so I had to use more than the usual number of warp pairs to fill the rails. The factory says it takes 10 hours to weave a CH25, but it took me more like 100 hours. Some trial and error for the tricky bits, and a lot of patient undoing and redoing. I used about 450 metres of cord. It has been very rewarding to restore the beautiful qualities of this chair: lightweight, sturdy, natural, comfortable, textural, with such classic danish modern sensibilities and line.
I have more photos of the process but am restricted to 6 photos for this post.
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Nice work! Beautiful pieces of furniture are definitely more enjoyable if you have put your time into refinishing it yourself and making it what you want it to be. The level of appreciation for the materials and the design is greatly heightened by putting your own blood and sweat into the wood.
I noticed you used a sheet bend to attach 2 ends of cord. I am interested in what spurred you to use that knot over a square (reefing) knot?
Nice work! I just took on my fourth or fifth CH25 to redo and at this point it's a pretty familiar process though I know I'll still have to sit and think how to do the weave on the outer back before proceeding. I took photos and saved the section of weave from that area to refer to, which should help. I think my last CH25 took 14-15 hours but I take some comfort in knowing that the 10 hour number applies to people who do these chairs all the time! With enough repetition, most of it becomes automatic and there's just not a lot of stopping and thinking about what to do next---or for fixing little screw-ups along the way. I'll never get to that point but that's ok.
I noticed your cord immediately--it has virtually undefined plies! I have never seen that before, and I've worked on many old Danish chairs with cord seats. The original cord on the CH25 that I'm doing now is the smooth "unlaced" type but the plies are still well defined. Interesting.
thanks for the positive comments. I'll try to upload more photos. I used the sheet bend because i read that it is used by weavers and also known as a Weavers Knot. It's quite neat and flat. I think the laced cord might be easier to work. i often had to tighten the twist on the unlaced to stop it opening and flattening.
Nice job with the weaving!
Do you remember where you got the cord? I know you said it was 30 years ago. I'm just curious about it. I've woven stripped and rewoven seats on a few hundred old Danish (and a few Swedish) chairs at this point and I've never seen cord like that. I had some cord that would flatten out when wrapped very snugly around frame corners but that was a result of it being not dense enough, not that it was laced or unlaced. It felt softer and more flexible, and when I unfurled the plies I found that they were of narrower strips of paper and the paper was lighter in weight than that in the good quality cord.
I use both laced and unlaced cord and as far as I can tell, the only difference is in the appearance. I just checked the paper width against some original old cord from a Wegner chair and it's the same.
PS--got the old CH25 to reweave and the frame has a couple of bad breaks and someone reglued a lot of the joints at some point but didn't get them lined up perfectly. It's a mess! I am sending it out for repairs---it's way, way beyond my skillset. I admire you guys who can handle that kind of challenge.
Frank's seems pretty good: http://www.franksupply.com/ .... I believe this is where Spanky recommended a while back.
Just got a 20lb roll from them and it seems like good quality 1/8" laced. It was certainly cheaper there than the last place I purchased cord from.
Don't get the L nails from here though. With the double rail on the CH23 you probably don't need many, if any. I ordered a pack of L nails, as I have a number of Moller's to do, and it seems like you always break a nail or two, so I wanted to have some extras on hand. The ones I received are not the true Danish L-nails though, but rather the electrical staples cut in half. There are many in the pack that are not even cut evenly, and have a far too short L portion to be useful.
I talked to the main guy at Franks a month or so ago. He was getting a sample of very accurate Danish cord and planning to do a tension test to make sure it was strong enough. If the factory uses too much recycled paper, the fibers have been too chopped up, and the cord isn't sufficiently strong. I haven't needed any more cord since then, so I don't know if that all worked out, but you might call and ask what they have at the moment.
And bear in mind that all the cord originally used by the Danes is not identical either.
Otherwise the cord that they sell is very, very similar to what you see on most Danish pieces. The only big difference is that it is a little bit thinner than what you usually see. If you are doing a whole set of chairs in the thinner cord it will work perfectly, but if you are re-doing just one within a whole set, it might not be a good enough match.
The OP is in Australia so shipping from other countries will be an issue. I don't know of any Australian suppliers but then I don't keep data on that stuff. Simon at the Danish Homestore in the UK might know of a supplier.
I went through one of those big 20 lb spools of cord from Frank's and ordered another a few years ago. The second one was very thin--like only 2/3 the amount of paper as in a sample of old Danish cord, and the paper was lighter in weight. I had a talk with Mr. Frank at the time and he said he was gonna get better stuff in. I bought up all his old 2 lb spools and when those ran out I started getting cord from Perkins. It's very good quality and is located much closer to me, so even though the cord costs more, the shipping is so much cheaper that it ends up being only a tiny bit more than from Frank's. So even if Frank's has good quality cord, I'll stick with Perkins.
Caning.com has the best deal on authentic Danish L-nails (50 for $3.95 at this time---november 2016). Unless someone else has listed them for even less and I haven't noticed. The cut staples are junk!
There's a lot of early stuff in the weaving threads on this forum that was updated over time. I know I did some things a certain way in my early years of weaving and then discovered better ways the more i wove.
Hi there,
Not sure if this helps ..... but.....
I'm a Danish cord weaver based in Sydney, Australia, you can check me out on Instagram or Facebook, ID is Modanest. If you need to buy some cord, I have some which I have supplied from Denmark? the franks stuff is too stiff, and the colours are inconsistent, as is the gauge ..... sorry to be a downer. His prices are good though!
Cheers.
Thanks for your tips. Yes I'm in Australia but I will be repairing the chairs in Cape Town so I'll need to get the cord freighted from another country anyway... I could try straight from Denmark. Interesting googling 'papirgarn'. Found this http://www.repp.dk/shop/papirgarn-5-kg-2672p.html
I did make my own nails, cut staples like you said.
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