New-wave wicker

Twenty years ago cane furniture was considered naff – good only for suburban conservatories. But with the growing interest in craft and sustainability, it’s weaving its way into the most stylish rooms. By Fiona Mcauslan

A 1970s look is back with a contemporary spin

CANE FURNITURE IS making a comeback. Light, affordable and easy to move, it became popular in Britain in the 19th century, but the mass-produced variety hit a style slump in the 1970s and ’80s when it became synonymous with the suburban conservatory. Now, though, it has cast aside its retro connotations, and a wave of forward-thinking designers has given this most enduring of crafts new energy by applying the latest technology and reviving ancient techniques.

‘Cane’, ‘rattan’ and ‘woven’ are often used interchangeably, but the differences are distinct. Used generically, ‘woven’ and ‘wicker’ refer to furniture part or wholly woven in a pattern from materials such as paper cord, rush, straw or raffia. ‘Cane’ usually refers to outer bark harvested from the southeast Asian rattan plant, which is split into narrow skeins and woven together. Traditionally it’s from this that the distinctive six-way pattern, the web of lacelike holes that people generally associate with cane furniture, is made.

The earliest examples of the six-way pattern go back to 250 BCE China, where it is thought to have been invented, but a look around recent design and furniture exhibitions such as Milan’s Salone del Mobile and the London Design Festival – and, indeed, a visit to high-street furniture shops – shows that rattan and other woven styles are in the ascendancy once more.

Paul Huggins, from the design shop SCP, credits the revival as part of the shift towards pieces that marry natural materials and a hand-crafted finish, as the market turns its back on the hard-edged gloss that manufacturing brought to the design world at the turn of the millennium.