THE HISTORY OF CANE FURNITURE

Using cane is a genuinely old craft; Products such as cane woven chests were crafted more then 2000 years BC.
Moses, as a baby was placed in a woven rattan basket and still to this day new born babies are put in to RATTAN baskets called Moses baskets.

Cane and rattan are the main source deriving from wicker, wicker meaning ‘small pliant twig’ deriving from the Swedish word ‘wika’.

CANE and rattan furniture have been around for a very long time in fact for centuries people have been making furniture from cane. Today it is mostly used in conservatories and is termed as conservatory furniture.

Cane and rattan have a unique beauty when crafted in to furniture It is a product like no other that can be woven with traditional skills still in use today to create some amazing pieces of conservatory FURNITURE.

Cane can climb up lengths of 180 meters as they try to reach the sunlight in the jungle.

Cane and rattan can be very difficult to collect ready to harvest, but once the raw materials have been gathered they have a long way to go before been turned in quality conservatory furniture. First, the cane and rattan is boiled in water to kill off any bugs that might be in the cane from the jungle.

The cane is then peeled and striped of the outer skin, Some time ago cane furniture was made in to conservatory furniture with skin still on this gave the furniture a very rough finish. At Cane Direct we use the very best peeled cane. The first stage is to peel the cane by hand. The second stage to reach very smooth cane it is put it through a machine. The cane is then graded on thickness and age. Our factory only uses grade A cane to produce a high quality and durable piece of furniture.

We then put the lengths of cane through troughs of water which are heated from underneath until the canes are flexible. This allows the worker to then bend the poles into the required shape to start the manufacturing process.

Thinner pieces of cane are used to make the binding on the joints. The intricate weaving this type of cane is normally called rattan. This is a skill that has been passed on through many families, and the weave can differ from region to region.

Before the final stage the cane will still have some very fine hairs attached to it. To remove these, we sand the product down very carefully. Then comes the final process of staining and lacquer the product. This is done on large hanging frames, as they rotate round a huge room they are first sprayed with a stain to get the desired colour and once dried they are lacquered many times to protect the furniture. The lacquer can be a mat finish or gloss, Once dry it is inspected for an even finish and sent to another warehouse to be packed for protection ready for shipping.

From an eco point of view harvesting the cane and rattan is very environmentally friendly, most of the worlds cane and rattan comes from Indonesia where they grow by far the best cane in the world.