Chair makers and rush-seat weavers

At a glance

• Place: Rancy and Bantanges, Saône-et-Loire
• Wood: beech
• Seat: rye straw wrapped around sedge
• Production in 1995: about 300,000 chairs a year by 200 workers

A chair country

Sedge, rye straw and fruit trees were close at hand, and the trade stayed artisanal and familial. Signs line the road and local models stand in rows in front of houses. Each maker has a signature: the curve of a back, the cut of a slat, the shape of a leg.

Making the frame

"A joiner cannot make a chair," they say: everything is drilled at an angle and every fit is out of square. Front and back legs, backs, slats and rungs are first roughed out in series from templates, then cut, shaped, planed and sanded. The band saw, double spindle moulder and tenoner have replaced the old planes, but the selle, a low thick bench, remains: on it some eighteen parts are assembled with a mallet in mortise and tenon, first the back, then the front.

Weaving the seat

The pailleuse splits rye straw with her nail, wraps it around strands of sedge and twists it round the frame while the chair turns on a swivel. A traditional seat takes about three hours. Imports from Asia reduced local seat weavers from two hundred to about thirty, many surviving on reseating for antique dealers.

Finishing

Assembled chairs are dyed, once with a sponge and later by dipping in a tank, dried and varnished with a spray gun.