Museum – Silver River Chairs

Chairs are documents, and caners are historians that preserve centuries of designs and techniques.
Benno M Forman ~American Seating Furniture, 1630-1730

Due to catastrophic flooding in 2024, our free museum (formerly in the River Arts District) is in flux. We lost 3/4 of our shop, but saved over 100 chairs! (We lost several hundred.) We are working on cataloging and photographing our collection to upload to an online gallery. We are curating a traveling chair weaving exhibit to tour small museums and historic homes in the region and across the US. Current exhibits are are on display in our new location @ 32 N. Main Street in Weaverville, NC. We hope to see you there!

In the past, our FREE museum served to educate our students and visitors to the River Arts District and Asheville. Our rotating collection of 200+ woven chairs showcased the diversity of the craft. The Chair Wall serves to educate on the Material, History, and Process of 8 basic styles of weaving. Our Western North Carolina Historical Collection will bring tears to the eyes of chair nerds. Notable chairs by George Hunzinger, Gustav Stickley, Gebruder Thonet, Niels Otto Moller, The Mace Family of Madison County, Woody’s Chair Shop (both the Max line & the Arval line), Hitchcock Chair Co, Mt Lebanon Shakers, Old Hickory Furniture, Brian Brace Fine Furniture and more!

All restoration, class, and consultation fees help us build our traveling woven chair exhibit to expand the reach of our educational goals. Chair Nerd & Chair Minion tshirts, bookmarks, postcards, and stickers are available as fundraisers for the upcoming exhibition.

Get involved:

Donate to the cause through PayPal, Venmo, or send us a check!
Share your photos and tag us on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter
Take a class
Share your story. Email SilverRiverChairs@gmail.com

School visits:

We love teaching the next generation! West Hendersonville High School Interior Design students visit us every semester. We worked with Harrisburg Elementary as part of an Arts Integration Grant and taught the entire 4th grade in 2019 (125 kids) and in 2022 (180 kids)! We’ve worked with Hanger Hall middle schoolers, and hosted field trips in the museum for Carolina Day School and The United Way’s Kids at Work Week. Hire us to demonstrate chair caning in a history, science, geography, or art class setting. Fees are negotiable on a case by case basis. Schedule your visit by calling 828-707-4553 or emailing SilverRiverChairs@gmail.com.

Previous Exhibits

The Chair Arch

(Note: The chair arch, along with Curve Studios & Garden was destroyed in catastrophic flooding in the River Arts District in 2024.) Our first public art sculpture was located outside our old shop at CURVE Studios & Garden. We built it in 2019 in honor of Pattiy Torno’s 30th anniversary of CURVE Studios. it also honors a long tradition of chair arches in High Wycombe UK, originally build to honor Queen Victoria as she toured the furniture making town. The Chair Arch can be visited 7 days a week from dawn to dusk.

ANATOMY OF A RUSH CHAIR

Created by master rush weaver David Klingler.

(note: this exhibit was destroyed in catastrophic flooding in the River Arts District in 2024.) A progression of six chairs beginning with the bare bones and stepping through several way-points in the rush process. Both students and visitors are allowed an in-depth look inside a typical rush chair.

Add Canespotting Exhibit, WNC Historic Chairs, Contemporary Chairs with Woven Seating, Rockers

Paintings by Ashley Sauder Miller

Mixed Media Painting by Ashley Sauder MIller

Ashley Sauder Miller lives with her husband and four children in Harrisonburg, VA. She earned undergraduate degrees from Hesston College (Kansas) and Eastern Mennonite University and her Master of Fine Arts from James Madison University with an emphasis in painting and drawing. After inheriting a caned chair with a broken seat, she taught herself to weave the pattern using string. Thus began her love affair with chairs. She has since almost exclusively devoted her art to interiors, some many with woven or upholstered chairs. She uses lace, cane, fabric, and her childrens’ artwork to create these striking contemporary mixed media paintings…she has even gone as far as cutting up some of her old paintings to weave into chairs. Many of her recent works have a floral theme using fiber collage for texture and depth.

Brandy found her on Instagram and they became immediate social media buddies until finally Ashley brought dozens of pieces of her artwork to Asheville. Keep up with her work on Instagram.

TINY CHAIRS

Contemporary Chairmakers Exhibit

While some may think of Chair Caning as a “lost art,” this display disproves that charming, shamefully under-examined theory. Rush woven chairs have been around for millennia and are still found in popular furniture catalogs and decor magazines. Caned furniture has gone in and out of style since its initial craze in 1680s Europe, to the Industrial Revolution, to the Mid-Century Design Boom of the 1950s & 1960s. Regardless of the materials. Woven furniture is always present.

Chairs are special for many reasons and they are notoriously difficult to design. Woven seats are comfortable, beautiful, and are preferred elements of design throughout the world today. These luxury chairmakers, classic chair makers, and contemporary design students prove that, in Western North Carolina, chair caning is a Thriving Art.

Chairs by Theron Ball and Julian Harris of The Haywood Community College Professional Crafts Program, Brian Boggs Chairmakers, and Woody’s Chair Shop.

A STUDY IN PATTERNS

On Loan from MINDY KING August 2015-August 2016
(www.chairweaver.com)

Mindy King is a second generation chair caner, mentored by her father, Rev. Ben Edwards who has been practicing the art for over 46 years. She holds a BFA degree in Woodworking and Furniture Design from the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology and has been working with wood since 1972. Her love of chair restoration began in high school when she repaired chairs and other fine furniture for an antique refinisher in Dublin, Ohio.