In the past I have worked on a few Rolls Royce cars that had a thick paint on the side of them that resembled a cane chair. I was amazed at how perfect this pattern was applied and only imagined how much time this would have taken the person or persons to apply this to the car body. It was also amazing that this canework was close to 70 years old and still in decent shape. One of the cars I worked on was a 1929 Rolls Royce that was built by the Brewster Body Company. We had to paint the car and work around the original canework without destroying it. It appeared to me that it could have been applied with a tool similar to what cake decorators use.
Below is an excerpt taken from CoachBuilt .com about the coach builder Brewster & Company on how the caning was applied.
“Another cane-related feature that became closely associated with Brewster was the painted faux-cane panel, which became known in the industry as French Cane or Basket-Weave. It was also used sparingly by other coachbuilders, including Locke, Fleetwood, Rollston and Holbrook, but most surviving examples are by Brewster. Although real French woven cane panels were available, they didn’t hold up well during inclement weather and a carriage painter named Barry in Brewster’s employ developed a system that duplicated the look using successive layers of incredibly thick paint.
A number of former Brewster employees disagree on the exact way it was applied.
According to any article written by Francis Nunan Howard for the Rolls-Royce Owner’s club Flying Lady magazine: George Steinmayer and Al Taylor claim it was done by a 3-man team. Two assistants held a straight edge against the body to guide the painter who applied the thickened paint using a pastry tube - a small conical bag tipped with a metal point with a 1/16″ hole. However, Leo Peters, who worked for Brewster prior to Steinmayer and Taylor, told Howard that “Barry” used a 3/8″ thick smooth board measuring about 6″ wide and 2 to 3 feet long into which an impression was made by a steel wheel. The straw colored paint was placed on the board and worked into the pattern similar to the intaglio process of engraving, and the excess wiped off. The board was baked in an oven until the paint hardened and completed board was affixed to the body using varnish which allowed them to fine-tune the final alignment.
Charles H. Willmore recollected that the system described by Steinmayer and Taylor was used, at least while he worked there. He told Hugo Pfau that the pattern was first chalked onto the panel which was typically painted the same color as the rest of the body. The thick yellow and cream colored paint was then carefully applied layer over layer using pastry tubes. Once all the layers had dried, the painter would add highlights and shadows as need so that the finished product was virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
It’s likely that both methods were used, depending on the size and location of the panel. When the entire rear tonneau or an entire door panel was covered, the method described by Willmore, Steinmayer and Taylor was used. However, when narrow cane panels were required as part of a belt molding or a door frieze, it’s plausible that they were applied in the same manner as a piece of molding, as detailed by Leo Peters.”
This is a close up of the caning on a 1929 Rolls Royce Brewster & Company body. It is a daimond pattern cane which can be found on chairs.
This was another Rolls Royce that my company Classic Body Works did some work on. I can’t remember the year or the body manufacturer.
Image source Concept Carz
This is a 1938 Rolls Phantom III with a Park Ward Body and canework on the rear doors.
