Village Squire, 1973-06, Page 11Intricate chair caning
no mystery
to these fingers
Take away our sight, and most of us
become bumbling fools. We stumble
in a darkened room or grope in a fog.
But when Harold Vodden, a Blyth har-
dware merchant lost his sight seven and
a half years ago, it began a career of
making beautiful things to make others
happy.
Mr. Vodden is now well known for
his work with reeds in caning chairs or
in making stools or baskets. Many a
lovely antique chair has felt his nimble
hands as he replaces old, worn webbing
with new cane, restoring it to its original
splendor.
"When 1 lost my sight" he says now,
"they sent a home teacher to train me
in different things. Then I went away
to Toronto and took a course in chair
caning.
"When I started, we had an old chair
ourselves that I practiced on and I thou-
ght that would be the last one I'd ever
do. I thought I'd be lucky if I ever got
any. But I've never run out of chairs.
I've been getting them from Michigan,
Tcconto, Goderich, Stratford, Wingham,
Lucknow. This one I'm working on comes
from Seaforth. Mos of them are over 100
years old. I did a rocking chair for people
in London and they were offered $200 for
it and turned it down.
Sometimes the chairs come one at a
time, and some times he'll get a half
dozen chairs in a set to do. First the
old webbing must be removed. Each
chair has six layers of webbing. The
first layer goes from front to back on
the chair seat and the second goes from
side to side. The third layer goes from
the right front to the left rear and must
be woven into the first two layers. Layer
four goes from back to back and layer
five from side to side. The final layer
is wuven from front left to rear right.
When this meticulous work k done, the
chair goes back to its owner.
"I guess people with vision wouldn't
have patience enough to do this", he
says.
His wife, Myrtle, he says, is an en-
ormous help. She helped while the
reporter was present, to untwist two
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