Cane Webbing
Cane webbing is woven from the outer bark of the rattan palm, cut into fine strips. The familiar open hexagonal mesh is produced by a six-way weave, and it is sold either as a pre-woven sheet set into a groove around a frame, or worked strand by strand through a line of drilled holes in the older hand-caned method.
The two methods are easy to tell apart. Hand caning shows individual strands passing through visible holes around the edge of the frame; sheet caning is held by a reed spline pressed into a continuous groove. Hand caning is repairable strand by strand and sheet caning is replaced whole.
As a material it does something no solid panel can: it encloses without blocking light or air. That is why it appears on chair backs, bed heads, cupboard doors and food safes, in warm climates especially, and why a caned door front will lighten a run of joinery that would look heavy in solid timber.
Cane is sensitive to dryness and to sunlight. Kept in a very dry room it becomes brittle and cracks along the strand; kept damp it slackens. The traditional remedy for a slack seat, a light wetting from underneath followed by slow drying, works because the strands shrink as they dry.