AROUND HOME : Wicker Furniture
THE CRAFT OF making wicker furniture goes back to Egyptian times, when chairs and even coffins were woven from reeds. Wicker is a general term that includes anything woven of rattan, reed, cane, dried grasses (prairie grass or sea grass), willow and even such pliable material as twisted paper. A Bostonian named Cyrus Wakefield is credited with having popularized wicker furniture in the United States. About 1850, he noticed, on the wharves in Boston Harbor where the China clippers were being unloaded, enormous piles of rattan that had been used to protect cargo. There, he reasoned, was a virtually free material that he could put to some profitable use.
He promptly opened a furniture factory specializing in wicker products. It was between 1870 and 1910 that wicker reached its greatest popularity. There were wicker pony traps, baby carriages, wicker headboards, chests of drawers, bookcases, sofas, armchairs, tables, rocking chairs and plant stands. There were wicker piano stools, floor and table lamps and easels. Because the material came from Asia, some manufacturers gave their products such exotic names as East India Chairs, Chinese Hourglass Chairs and Punjab Furniture. It was true that some wicker furniture--like the popular fan-backed chair--was imported, but most of it was manufactured in the United States.
In the Victorian era, wicker was also considered an ideal outdoor furniture. This was the era of the great summer hotels, when the wealthy middle class migrated each summer from the cities to the seaside and mountains in search of cool, fresh air. The epitome of the old resort hotel might well be the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Mich., with its famous 692-foot-long veranda, still lined today with rocking chairs and other wicker furniture. This sort of resort furniture is often called Bar Harbor (after the resorts in Maine and others that featured this furniture), although originally there were styles conforming to all the popular resorts of the day.
The pliability of the material allowed the 19th-Century craftsmen who were responsible for wicker’s golden age to execute many imaginative shapes. The era was one of great experimentation--other exotic materials were used, such as metal, papier-mache and laminated wood. For indoor use, wicker was most often stained mahogany or oak and, for the outdoors, painted white.
Today, antique wicker furniture, particularly those pieces made for Victorian summer houses and resort hotels, retains most of its considerable charm and all of its considerable comfort.
Antique wicker can be found at Country Pine and Design in Santa Monica; Hays House of Wicker and Harvey’s Tropical Sun Rattan in Los Angeles; Century Antiques in Glendale; Antique House in La Crescenta; HRB Antiques in Lakeside; Antique Guild in Santa Ana; Antiques Anonymous in Garden Grove; Uncle Tom’s Antiques in Orange; Snooty Fox in Ventura, and Snow Goose and Pacific Coast Trading Co. (reproductions) in La Jolla.