♪♪
-The paper cord is craft paper,
and it's three strands that have been twisted together and waxed.
And this came around after World War II
when there was a lack of supplies
of mainly cane and seagrass,
which were used as weaving materials.
Fiber rush was invented after World War I
because of the same reason.
And that was founded in the States.
But then the Danes decided to improve upon fiber rush.
The basic process starts with a 10-pound reel
of paper cord.
And it all starts with just tacking the first strand
onto the chair itself.
The first chair I ever wove took me about 10 hours,
and I would probably give myself a C minus, maybe D plus on that.
If I remember correctly,
I probably undid my first chair three or four times
just to get it up to some standard
that I wasn't embarrassed by.
The challenging aspects of weaving starts first,
with being able to actually match the amount of rows
that the chair is supposed to have.
It can be very deceptive thinking
that you've completed a chair,
but you actually need to fit another six rows in there,
and you don't learn
that until you've nailed everything into place,
and you start to space out the rows at the end
and you realize there's big gaps in your pattern.
Here at Sparklebarn, we have a nice workshop
where we have plenty of tools to be able to prepare these chairs,
to be able to be woven.
Some of the chairs that I appreciate working on
are definitely going to be any that are made by Møller.
Niels Møller was a chair designer
and he designed many chairs.
He would take almost about five years to design a chair,
but then even his son took over the company.
Jorgen Møller and I've been able to work on both of their chairs,
which I think is quite remarkable.
And then obviously Hans Wegner is a great chair designer,
and he played around with so many different weave patterns
that have been a lot of fun to be able to learn from.
I do find it beautiful
because I think there's a respect to the materiality,
being able to actually see the weave,
and also each strand of craft paper,
and I find that inherently beautiful,
where you can actually see every aspect of a chair all at once.
There's nothing being concealed and seeing almost these,
like raw ingredients of the wood and the paper coming together.
♪♪
I think my future with paper cord
is just going to continue to grow.
There are chairs that I'm working on
that are 50, 60, 70 years old that have had this material
and hopefully that inspires chairs of today
to also use the material.
And maybe working on a contemporary design
or a new weave pattern
so that this material isn't just forgotten about
and thought about only at a single moment of time,
but something that can be used for generations.
♪♪
-For more information about Danish cord weaving,
contact Steffen at sparklebarn@gmail.com.
♪♪
Up next, three talented musicians share the story of
how they became The Carlile Family Band.
[ Cheers and applause ]
This is the motorhome.
And we travel and live and eat, sleep, work inside of this baby.
This is where I sleep.
Musical instruments in the dash as per usual.
Over here is the homework station.
This is where the kids do their homework,
and more musical instruments.
And here are the kid's bunks.
JayJ, I just gotta say,
you did such a good job cleaning it up for this interview.