How to weave a new seat on the Wishbone Chair (CH24)
The short answer
The Wishbone Chair seat is woven in the rush pattern with 3 mm Danish paper cord; a 150 m roll is enough for one seat. Because the seat is wider at the front than at the back, you fill the two front corners first. Then you weave round by round, around all four corners, until the four triangles meet in the middle.
There are no L-nails and no holes, just the cord wrapped around the rails. Pull every round tight, keep the diagonal lines running straight into the corners, and make your joins underneath, where they don’t show.
- Chair
- Hans J. Wegner, CH24 (1949)
- Material
- 3 mm paper cord, a 150 m roll
- Pattern
- Rush pattern (kuvertflet)
- Free video
- 37 minutes, start to finish
What’s in a Wishbone seat
Hans J. Wegner designed the Wishbone Chair, the CH24 or “Y-chair” in Danish, in 1949. Its seat is woven in paper cord, and that’s the part that wears out first. The frame usually lasts for generations; the seat gets slack, frays at the front rail and finally breaks.
The weave is the classic rush pattern, called kuvertflet in Danish because the finished seat looks like the back of an envelope. It’s the same pattern we weave in seagrass, so if you’ve woven a rush-pattern seat, you know the moves already. It’s different from the flat, nailed weave on many other Danish cord chairs; that one is in our Danish cord guide.
Same pattern as a rush seat. Just a finer cord.
What you need
Use the same thickness as the original seat. On the Wishbone Chair, that’s 3 mm paper cord.
Material
- 3 mm Danish paper cord, a 150 m roll enough for one seat. A 625 m roll covers about four Wishbone seats.
Tools
- A good knife to cut away the old seat and trim the cord.
- Clamps to hold the cord while you take a break.
- A weaving needle or a flat stick, for the last rounds where the opening gets narrow.
- Sandpaper to round off any sharp edge on the rails.
How to weave the Wishbone seat in eight steps
The order we follow in the workshop, and in the free video at the top of this page.
Step 1: Photograph, then cut away the old seat
Take photos from above and below first, especially of how the cord starts and ends. Then cut the old cord away from underneath. Don’t pry at the rails; the frame is the part you want to keep.
Step 2: Check the frame
Wishbone Chairs often come to us wobbly. If a joint is loose, glue it now, while the seat is off. Sand away any sharp edge on the rails, because a sharp edge wears through new cord.
Step 3: Fill the two front corners
The front rail is longer than the back rail. To make up the difference, you weave around the two front corners only, round after round, until the space left on the front rail is as wide as the back rail. In our video, that’s 12 rounds on the left and 12 on the right.
Fasten each round on the inside of the side rail, where the full pattern will cover it later.
Step 4: Start the full pattern
Now go around all four corners, one after the other, always in the same direction. At each corner the cord goes over the rail and around it, crosses itself, and goes over and around the next rail before it travels on to the next corner.
Step 5: Tighten the first rounds
After the first few full rounds, go back and pull them tight one by one. They set the shape for everything that follows. Check that the diagonal lines run straight into the corners; if a corner drifts, push the rounds back into line now.
Push each new round firmly against the last one. Gaps at the rails never close up later.
Step 6: Add more cord underneath
You can’t weave the whole seat from one length you can handle, so you join new cord as you go. Make every join underneath, in the space between the top and bottom layers, so no knot shows on top. Plan your lengths so a join never lands on the visible part of the seat.
Step 7: Pull it through one round at a time
As the triangles meet, the opening in the middle gets too narrow for a bundle of cord. From here you pull the cord through by hand, one round at a time (“single pulling” in the video). It’s slower, but it keeps the last rounds as tight as the first.
If one pair of rails fills up before the other, close the gap that’s left with figure-eight wraps between the two rails that still have room.
Step 8: Finish underneath
When the seat is full, fasten the end on the underside where it can’t be seen or pulled loose. Turn the chair over and check the pattern: straight diagonals, no gaps at the rails, and an even, tight seat.
Mistakes we often see
Skipping the front corners
If you start the full pattern straight away, the triangles meet off-centre and the seat looks skewed. Fill the front corners first.
Loose first rounds
The first rounds take the most strain. If they’re slack, the whole seat sags. Go back and tighten them.
The wrong thickness
Thicker cord makes a bulky seat and the last rounds very hard to pull through; thinner cord makes a thinner, weaker seat that looks wrong. The Wishbone Chair takes 3 mm.
Knots on top
A join on the visible side catches and wears. Every join goes underneath.
Washing the seat
Paper cord shouldn’t be washed. Dust it with a soft brush, and dab a spill with a cloth that’s barely damp.
Questions we get a lot
How much paper cord does a Wishbone Chair need?
A 150 m roll of 3 mm cord is enough for one seat. If you’re doing a set, a 625 m roll covers about four chairs.
Is the Wishbone Chair seat paper cord or rope?
Paper cord: hard-twisted paper, also called Danish cord or papirgarn. It’s strong and lasts for many years when it’s woven tight.
Can I weave a black seat?
Yes. The pattern and the amount are the same; only the colour of the cord changes.
What does it cost to have it done instead?
At the Kurvemagerne workshop in Denmark, a new Wishbone seat costs from DKK 1,300 including VAT (2026 price list).
Weave the rush pattern with us
Watch the full Wishbone seat in our free video above. The seagrass course teaches the same rush pattern, round by round: weaving the corners, evening out a seat that’s wider at the front, filling it out and closing the middle.