More Than Meets the Eye: A Brief History of Cane Chair Production by the Visually Impaired
Katie Cynkar, WPAMC ’25
The impact of disability is all around us. It can present itself in the most unexpected places, so long as you know how to look. This is how I felt when the WPAMC Class of 2025 and our leaders visited the Silver River Center for Chair Caning in Asheville, North Carolina. As we entered the studio, overflowing stacks of antique and modern cane chairs filled nearly all the available space. With cautious dexterity, I made my way towards one corner where a peculiar, unknown object sat. I came to learn that the object was called an adjustable chair vice.
The adjustable chair vice was a tool used to aid in the process of weaving cane for furniture prior to its installation in an object. While chair caning was performed by many different people around the world, this particular instrument was primarily used by blind and visually impaired people. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the authorities of various institutions such as the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind believed it was their duty to teach blind and visually impaired individuals various skills that would allow them to live as independently as possible. Chair caning was one such skill that could provide a necessary source of income to individuals as they reached adulthood. As a relatively simple task, all young boys and sometimes girls were taught the process both with a built frame and with the adjustable chair vice.1 The final products were then sold in workshops and warehouses owned by the institutions, generating an income of between $15 to $25 per month.2 As the children grew older and advanced out of school, some institutions would employ these individuals in the adjoining workshops.3 Those who were not as fortunate could continue this practice in the home as a source of income. While I learned of this history in the United States, this trade skill was taught at various schools for the blind around the world, including at Miss Askwith’s School for the Blind in Palamcottah, South India. To this day, chair caning is a trade skill that continues to provide employment and community for people with visual impairments.4
As I looked at this device, I thought about how disability is made invisible or hidden in history. Many people have wrongly pushed people with disabilities out of visibility due to the misunderstanding that people with disabilities could not contribute to society. This adjustable chair vice proves this wrong. People with disabilities have always found ways to live their lives as independently as possible and tools like this one help them achieve this goal. By doing so, they visibly present their disability through objects like cane furniture. So perhaps if we can look with attention to the many contributions of people with disabilities to a world of objects, we can see these “hidden histories” right under our eyes.
- Brief History of the Illinois Institution for the Blind, Located at Jacksonville, Ill., 1849-1893. Chicago: John Morris Company, Printers, [1893], p. 45. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (accessed August 27, 2024). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CIHJSM228760561/NCCO?u=udel_main&sid=bookmark-NCCO&xid=cb827ea3&pg=46. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Armitage, Thomas Rhodes. The Education and Employment of the Blind: What It Has Been, is, and Ought to Be: by Thomes Rhodes Armitage, 2nd ed. London: Harrison and Sons, 1886. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (accessed August 27, 2024). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CIAFOI096794688/NCCO?u=udel_main&sid=bookmark-NCCO&xid=75924c3e&pg=65. ↩︎
- Clara Haizlett, “Chair Caning Provides Employment and Community for Folks with visual Impairments in Wheeling, W. Va.” West Virginia Public Broadcasting, April 1, 2024. https://wvpublic.org/chair-caning-provides-employment-and-community-for-folks-with-visual-impairments-in-wheeling-w-va/ ↩︎
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