ALTAMONT — Grab a seat, or at least watch one being made.

The lost art of chair caning will be revived at the Altamont fairgrounds next week, under the able hands of Bill Bichteman.
"I haven’t been to the Altamont Fair since I was a kid," said Bichteman. "I can remember when"my brother had a Ford roadster and we all piled into the trunk and didn’t come out until we were in the gate. Boy, that was a long time ago."

Bichteman’s coming back, but this time he’ll most likely be sitting in the front of the car and his trunk won’t be filled with siblings. Instead, Bichteman will be bringing a chair and some cane to the Grange building next Thursday to weave a seat.

Traditional chair caning is the weaving of single strands of cane onto wood-frame seats and the backs of chairs, rockers, and settees. The cane is fastened with wooden pegs or dowels to the chair and the cane is soaked so that the seat tightens once dried.

Many different techniques and materials are used for chair-seat weaving.

It is a time-consuming process that can take days to finish, but, according to Bichteman, the end result is a sturdy, comfortable chair that can’t be mass produced or bought in a big-box store.
"It all depends on the chair. The best I’ve ever done was one day, but it usually takes longer than that," Bichteman said. "Every chair is different. Some are expensive and all the holes are lined up right, others are off, and some of the round ones have a groove where you can’t tie a knot."

From 1 to 5 p.m., and again from 6 to 8 p.m., Bichteman will be weaving away at the Grange building.
"I’ll have a chair that I will start from scratch and we’ll see how far we’ll get," Bichteman told The Enterprise. "Anybody who wants to know about it can ask me. I’m not going to be there to do a hurry-up job."
Bichteman, who only canes chairs "on the side," said he got into the trade through friendships.
"I make doormats out of flat tires, but I’m getting out of that," said Bichteman. "A gentleman in Massachusetts was making seats with rush and I got to know him and starting making stools."

Rush seat weaving uses either natural or cattail leaf rush, bulrush, or man-made fiber rush to weave around the chair’s four rings or dowels. With this technique, the material creates four distinct triangles in the seat pattern.
"It was while I was doing that that, people wanted chairs, and that’s when I met a woman in Guilderland who was running a class at the Guilderland High School," Bichteman said. "And that’s how I learned. I kept going back to her class even though I didn’t need to anymore. She died about seven years ago."
Bichteman makes all of his chairs at his home near the Alcove Reservoir in Albany County. All of the materials are bought and shipped to Bichteman’s house. He describes his home as the "big ol’ farmhouse up on the hill by the Alcove falls."

When it comes to caning, Bichteman said, practice and patience are key.
"I’m still learning everyday. It’s a learning process," he said. "When you first do it, it’s terrible, you get all twisted up"You start off using really short [canes strings]. But when you get better, you try to use the longest one you can find."

Bichteman has displayed his caning skills and has sold his chairs at local craft fairs, but this will be his first demonstration at the Altamont Fair.

He recognizes that chair caning has become an obscure art in modern furniture making, but he’s not in it for the money.
"The younger generation is all about plastic; they don’t care about a good chair. They just throw ’em out," said Bichteman. "You can’t make any money at it"You do it because you enjoy it.
"I just enjoy making things," he concluded.

Bichteman said he was asked to do the demonstration by the Grange’s craft and event fair coordinator, Pearl Collins.

The Grange building will host a different event or demonstration each day of the fair and will also have a variety of pies and other baked goods for sale each day.
"I’ve belonged to the Grange for, oh"I believe it was ’57 when I joined," Collins told The Enterprise. "Whenever we were at the fair, that’s when I started doing it"It’s like one big family. Grangers are all over and when you meet them, you automatically have something in common."
"Coincidentally," Bichteman said. "The chair I’ll be working on belongs to Pearl."