Coastal Living Room Package in Natural Rattan

A whole room in one delivery, sized for a living room being taken in a coastal direction without replacing the sofa. Everything woven in the same workshop in the same weeks, which is the only way a room of natural material reads as deliberate rather than accumulated.

Our workshops are in Cirebon on the north coast of Java, which has made rattan furniture for a century and is where most of the good work still comes from. The rattan is harvested from managed forest, which is the interesting part: because rattan needs the trees to climb, a rattan crop is worth more standing than felled, and it is one of the few forest products that gives a village a financial reason to leave the forest where it is.

Specification

• Dimensions: see the contents list below for every piece
• Seat or working height: seat heights 420mm, table heights 450mm and 760mm
• Frame: steam bent rattan and solid hardwood at the load points
• Weave: hand woven throughout, one workshop, one batch of cane
• Finish: natural rattan pole and peel, steam bent over a former and bound at every joint, finished in a clear matt lacquer that lets the cane keep its own colour
• Load rating: as the individual pieces, stated on each listing
• 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: Chairs arrive assembled, the table arrives with its legs off. Allow about half an hour for the whole set with the spanner in the box.
• Weight: approximately 104.0 kilograms in total
• Contents: one 1400mm cane fronted sideboard, two woven armchairs, one round coffee table, one 900mm round mirror, two baskets
• Saving against buying the pieces separately: about 10 per cent
• Colour matched: cane varies batch to batch, and a package is one batch
• One delivery slot, two person delivery to the room of your choice
• Packaging taken away on the same visit if you ask when you book
• Every piece is also sold separately

What you get

• One 1400mm cane fronted sideboard
• Two woven armchairs
• One round coffee table
• One 900mm round mirror
• Two baskets
• All cushions with removable washable covers
• Felt pads for every leg and a spare set
• One spanner and one allen key for the whole package
• A care card and a repair kit of matching cane

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.