Cane Fronted Wardrobe 1200mm Wide with Two Doors in Cane and Mahogany

A 1200mm wardrobe with woven cane door panels, sized for a two door wardrobe, which is the standard bedroom size. Cane doors let a wardrobe breathe, which matters more than people realise in a bedroom that gets damp in winter.

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: 1200mm wide by 580mm deep by 1900mm high
• Seat or working height: hanging rail at 1650mm, top shelf at 1700mm
• Frame: solid timber carcass, mortice and tenon, with a braced back
• Weave: hand woven cane webbing in the doors, set in a rebate with reed spline
• Finish: a solid mahogany frame with hand woven cane webbing, the combination used on Regency chairs and still the best
• Load rating: hanging rail 40kg, shelves 25kg
• 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: Flat packed to keep the delivery sensible, about an hour with the spanner in the box. Frame joints are bolted through steel inserts, and the woven panels arrive already woven onto their frames rather than as something you have to assemble.
• Weight: approximately 128.6 kilograms
• Doors: two, soft close hinges, 110 degree opening
• Hanging: one full width rail with a shelf over
• One shelf below the hanging space
• Ventilation: the cane panels are the reason this suits a damp bedroom
• Comes apart flat for a move
• Anti tip strap supplied

What you get

• The carcass and doors, flat packed
• One full width hanging rail with sockets
• Shelves and drawer boxes as listed
• Handles fitted, in aged brass or matt black
• Levelling feet, felt pads and an anti tip strap
• A spanner, a care card and a 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.