Brandy Clements: Camp Creators & Alumni Artisans Series
Camp Creators & Alumni Artisans Series
This article is part of a series on “Alumni Artisans,” celebrating the many creatives we have in our summer camp community. In it, we’ll be featuring visual artists, performers, and art teachers, all of whom have been staff or campers at Falling Creek. If you know of an artist in our alumni community who we should feature, please email us at .
Photo courtesy of Nathan Chesky.
We spend so much of our daily life sitting down, but how much time do we spend thinking about where we’re sitting? For self-proclaimed “chair nerd” and Falling Creek Camp alumna, Brandy Clements, chairs are frequently at the top of her mind.
Brandy and her husband Dave Klingler established the Silver River Center for Chair Caning in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s the nation’s only chair caning school and museum. Designated as an Official Education Center of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, students of all ages have come from around the world to learn this global craft.
Chair caning is an ancient art form, and was introduced to Brandy through family traditions. She initially learned four weaving styles from her Aunt Linda, and quickly discovered her passion for repairing caned chairs. Over the years, Brandy grew from basic functional weaving techniques, to mastering advanced styles, refining her craft, and sharing her knowledge. She continued learning through personal experience, guidance from others in the chair caning community, and through her travels around the US and Europe. What was first a side-job repairing chairs turned into an artist residency at the Grove Arcade Arts and Heritage Gallery. Then in 2010, the Silver River Center for Chair Caning was established in Asheville’s River Arts District, and Brandy joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild in 2011. She has now woven thousands of chairs, shared her passion and knowledge with people across the world, and shows no signs of slowing down.
“I always liked working with my hands,” said Brandy. This will come as no surprise to fellow camp alumni who remember her teaching Arts & Crafts during the four summers she worked at Falling Creek as a counselor (1995-’98). Initially, Brandy thought of chair weaving as something fun and functional, but the passion for it didn’t really take hold until she was a few years into learning the craft. “The more chairs you work on the more you realize how crazy varied they are. Every chair is a new experience, even if it’s the same type of weaving.”
The functionality and beauty of caned chairs isn’t the only reason Brandy is drawn to them - it’s the history. “People would tell me the stories of their chairs. Whether it was a personal story or a design and history story, it was always really interesting. That’s where it really started to get nerdy and fun. I was learning about the background and just started to be impressed by the chairs themselves.”
Brandy enjoys celebrating the individual stories that each chair holds, but the Silver River Center itself is a tribute to the grand history of chair caning as a whole. The museum holds over 100 woven chairs from different time periods and locations, displaying the huge variety of materials and weaving techniques that exist in chair caning. The materials used to weave these seats include natural fibers like rattan and rush, machine and hand-woven cane, seagrass and danish cord, hickory and oak splint, shaker tape, and even rawhide. “I could fill up 10,000 square feet easily with exhibits,” said Brandy. The collection is a mixture of inherited family chairs, antiquing treasures, donations, and local artist work on display.
While Brandy didn’t get started in chair caning until after her time at Falling Creek, she does say that working so close to the woodshop at camp gave her the curiosity and inspiration to learn more about furniture and wood art. She loved the camp community and proximity to nature while at Falling Creek, and still thinks fondly about summer camp friends and memories. “I still talk about camp all the time,” she says. Among the many memories we discussed were watching fireflies on the landsports field, the cozy sound of rain on the metal cabin roof, and even the distinct smell of the Arts and Crafts room.
Brandy still keeps in touch with her camp friends today, mainly through social media, which has also been a key way for her to connect with fellow “chair nerds” around the world. She has been able to make connections to chair weavers in Tasmania, Egypt, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Australia, Canada, and throughout Europe. In addition to being part of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, she’s also a member of the Seat Weavers Guild. “I do feel like there’s this regeneration of the craft that’s been happening for the last 10 years or so, ” said Brandy. She says that working with guilds helps open her eyes to all the different history, techniques, and crafts out there.
Brandy is passionate about sharing chair caning with the next generation, and we asked what advice she would give to a camper looking to get involved in her same line of work. “Well, there’s chair caning as the hobby and then there’s chair caning as the business,” said Brandy. “If you want to get into chair caning and make money with it, you should know business as well, including marketing and customer relations. If you want to get into the craft, just enjoy it. It can be frustrating, it’s a process. People think, ‘I can take one class and I can weave chairs.’ They don’t realize that they can weave that one chair, but every chair is going to be completely different. Whatever craft you get into, whether it’s weaving or something else, just dive deep. Once you feel like you know it all, that’s the moment that you really have a lot to learn, because the craft is always so much bigger than the one thing you’re doing.”
Brandy emphasizes that the Silver River Center for Chair Caning isn’t just a restoration business, but a school dedicated to carrying on the craft. “It’s not only that we’ve woven thousands of chairs, it’s about the teaching. It’s the nerdy history behind chair caning that is really important to us and teaching other people.” If you can’t make it in person to see the museum or take a class, there are many educational videos available to watch on their YouTube channel (@SilverRiverChairs) or Instagram.
These days, Brandy and Dave can be found hard at work in the repair shop (along with their golden retriever Rosie), teaching in person at craft schools/public/charter/homeschools, lecturing at conferences, traveling for research, creating YouTube videos, and writing their new instructional book, which is due to come out next year. Brandy’s favorite part about this work is sharing her passion with others. “I like teaching people and making them look at chairs differently.”
The Silver River Center for Chair Caning is currently open by appointment. They are located at #5 River Arts Place, Suite 201 Asheville, NC 28801. For information about appointments and classes, call 828-707-4553, e-mail , check out the website: silverriverchairs.com, or find them on social media and YouTube @SilverRiverChairs.