Marlborough College Summer School July 2013

I thought it was about time that SitUpon Seats had a place where our customers, friends, students and others could interact with us and with each other.

I'd particularly like to welcome my new friends from Marlborough College Summer School, who were such amazing and excellent students.

 I was amazed at how quickly they worked. Within the second day, we already had three rush chairs completed.

We made our home in one of the college's science labs - a strange place to do craft work, but everyone soon settled down quite happily.

Each of the six students had something different to work on, which was great, as everyone could learn something from each other's projects. On the left we see the final stages of a cane bedroom chair, as the beading cane is being attached, and on the right, a big bergère chair. Fortunately only the seat needed recaning.

 Three people had rush chairs to work on.

The seats have to be packed with paper from below, to keep them firm.

 Here we can see a cane stool with a gently curved seat in the process of having its pegs hammered in. With a curved seat, you have to lay down the first horizontals and second verticals from below, in order to preserve the curve.

On the left you can see a rather different project - a chair which was originally designed for a rush seat having a seat made from Danish cord.

Danish cord is an incredibly versatile material, often overlooked by seatweavers who assume it's only suitable for the Scandinavian chairs for which it was originally created.

The official college photographer came round to  take photos of our students at work, so I thought it only fair to take a photo of the photographer at work, too.

As the week progressed, several people started working on seagrass stools.

 At the end of the week we were able to display all our hard work for the rest of the world to see. I was incredibly impressed by how much these six people, who had never done any seatweaving before, had achieved in just 5 days. I hope they continue to do more in the future.

It was a pleasure working with you guys. Please log in and say "hello"!