Cane Fronted Sideboard 1800mm Wide with Four Doors in Whitewashed Rattan

A 1800mm sideboard with hand woven cane door fronts on a solid timber carcass. Cane fronts breathe, which is why this shape has been used for food and linen storage for two hundred years and why it still suits a record collection.

Three words get used interchangeably and only one of them is a material. Rattan is a climbing palm that grows through the forest canopy in Indonesia and the Philippines and reaches maturity in five to seven years. Cane is the outer skin of that same palm, stripped off and used flat for weaving and binding. Wicker is not a material at all, it is a weave, and you can wicker rattan, willow, seagrass or paper cord. Almost every shop selling this furniture uses the three words as though they were the same thing, which is why so much of what is sold as rattan turns out to be dyed paper cord over a steel frame. Everything here says which it is, on every listing, and if it is not rattan we do not call it rattan.

Specification

• Dimensions: 1800mm wide by 450mm deep by 780mm high
• Seat or working height: top at 780mm, which is worktop height
• Frame: solid timber carcass with mortice and tenon joints, not dowelled board
• Weave: hand woven cane webbing set into a rebate and pinned with reed spline
• Finish: rattan given a thinned white finish that sinks into the pores and leaves the grain visible, which is what separates a whitewash from a coat of white paint
• Load rating: 40kg per shelf, 80kg on the top
• Indoor or outdoor: Indoors, or a covered veranda or conservatory that stays dry. Natural rattan is not garden furniture and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a chair that will go grey, swell, split and unravel inside two seasons. If you want rattan outdoors you want woven polyethylene, which is a good product honestly described and something we do not sell.
• Assembly: Arrives with the legs off, which is four bolts and about ten minutes. The spanner is in the box and the bolts are threaded into steel inserts rather than into the timber, so they can come off again for a move.
• Weight: approximately 64.8 kilograms
• Doors: four, with an adjustable shelf behind each pair
• Cane webbing: replaceable, and we sell the webbing and the spline
• Back panel: solid, with two cable notches you can pop out
• Legs: turned timber, bolted through steel inserts so they come off
• Takes a 55 inch television on top
• Feet: felt pads fitted, levelling glides supplied

What you get

• The sideboard, with the legs packed separately
• Two adjustable shelves
• Handles fitted, in aged brass or matt black
• Levelling glides and felt pads
• A spanner, a care card and a small piece of matching cane webbing

Care

Dust it with a soft brush rather than a cloth, because a cloth skates over the weave and a brush gets into it. Two or three times a year wipe it over with a barely damp cloth and let it dry away from a radiator. Rattan does not like being dry any more than it likes being wet, so a piece that lives next to a radiator or in a room with the heating on all winter will benefit from a light mist of water once a month, which sounds like an old wives' tale and is the single most useful thing anyone will tell you about it. If a strand lifts, do not pull it. Damp it, press it back and hold it with masking tape overnight.

Where it works

This is the piece people mean by coastal: pale, woven and light enough to move with one hand. It sits happily against white or off white walls and against the greens and warm neutrals that have replaced grey in most houses. In a room with a lot of hard surfaces it does the job that a rug does, which is to take the edge off the echo.